Budgeting

Introduction

This tool will show you how to estimate the costs and develop a budget for an SBC intervention or strategy.

Costing SBC interventions

SBC initiatives can very rarely be costed as end-products or tools. SBC interventions require investment across six phases: discovery, design, development, testing, iteration and delivery (which includes implementation, monitoring and scaling). The first step to preparing a budget is to consider each step of your proposed process. Investment in the initial stages of an SBC intervention or strategy – such as gathering and analysing social and behavioural data, and developing coordination mechanisms – is chronically under-funded across the world. In order to design and deliver effective SBC interventions, you must sufficiently budget for each phase of the process.

There are various factors that determine the cost of SBC interventions. The most important are: intended scale of implementation (population-wide, specific province, community-level in a set of areas, etc); mode of delivery (fixed facility delivery, outreach community engagement, remote engagement); the nature of the intervention (individual or community-level in-person activities, radio, TV, etc.); number of participants; length of initiative; and type of approach (degree of participation, rounds of iteration).

SBC strategies that utilize a combination of different SBC interventions and approaches, typically cost more. 

Considerations

Funding requirements will depend on specific needs and available resources. As such, this guidance cannot be prescriptive. Instead, you’ll find a set of questions to consider before developing your funding proposal.

Key questions

• What resources already exist for this work? Can they be easily accessed or reallocated?  
• Do you have enough budget to cover the development of a comprehensive SBC strategy that includes sending team members into the field to spend significant time with the groups you seek to partner with?  
• Are SBC priorities adequately reflected in UNICEF’s strategic and program planning tools at country level, including programme strategy narratives, Country Programme Action Plans and Annual Work Plans? This helps ensure a more comprehensive and coherent allocation of funds.  
• Does the budget fit into existing national plans or objectives, or does  it stand alone?  
• Do you foresee any budgetary constraints?  
   

Possible funding sources  

• Increased budget won through budget negotiations  
• Reallocation of funds in national/existing budgets  
• Joint funding from relevant ministries (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Child Protection or Child Welfare, Ministry of Health) or UN agencies  
• Integration into existing funded initiatives and prospective funding proposals, including UNICEF’s sectoral programs  
• Targeted fundraising with external donors (public or private) for specific interventions within the strategy, or the strategy as a whole  
   

Practical budget-building guidance

For each activity, consider the cost of:   

• Labour  
• External technical support (including, consulting fees for technical experts such as statisticians, or corporate contracts)  
• Paid partnerships  
• Travel (including flights/car hire, accommodation, per diems)  
• Transcription and translation  
• Design and materials  
• Production costs (including printing and shipping)  
• Training costs (including per diems for stakeholders, space rental, etc)  
• Infrastructure (including temporary hire of physical spaces and permanent office space)  
• Software (including licences for data management and analysis or design software)  
• Supply and equipment

When building a budget for an SBC intervention or strategy, it’s important to consider a range of costs across the SBC process: discovery; design, development and testing; delivery and implementation; monitoring and evaluation. The table below provides a range of low to high cost approaches. 

Discovery

Delivery and implementation

Monitoring and evaluation

The cost of SBC approaches

This section provides you with some indicative costs of different SBC interventions and strategies, including actual costs from projects across the world. Please note these examples are contextually dependent, and the costs will also have changed with time.  The costs provided here serve as a reference, not a prescription.   
The cost approximations have been taken from an SBC Cost Repository built from work by Breakthrough Action + Research and led by Avenir Health.  The costs for SBC interventions are highly dependent on context and scope, rather than on the type of approach applied.

Community engagement approaches  

• INDIA: Strengthening malaria service delivery through supportive supervision and community mobilization in an endemic Indian setting: Approx. total cost: 40,724  
• NORTHERN INDIA: A state-wide population based cancer awareness and early detection campaign in a 2.67 million population of Punjab state: Approx. total cost: 149,941 USD

Applied behavioural science approaches

• KENYA: A mobile phone text-message reminder programme to improve health worker adherence to malaria guidelines | Total cost ≈ 18,853 USD  
• MEXICO: A prevention programme comprised of behavioural, biomedical, and structural interventions to support men who have sex with men | Total cost ≈ 18,872,207 USD  

Strategic communication approaches  

Mass media  

• KENYA: A rural social marketing campaign for condoms that included leaflets, radio programmes and brief announcements, 60-second spots at commercial village cinema shows, and metal door signs | Total cost ≈ 40,000 USD  
• TANZANIA: Design, implementation and evaluation of a national campaign to distribute nine million free long-lasting insecticidal nets to children under the age of five | Total cost ≈ 3,081,257 USD

Interpersonal communication and educational activities (IPC) 

• GHANA: Person-to-person communication, in addition to local radio, posters and banners informed the community about insecticide-treated bednet distribution during measles vaccination. | Total cost ≈ 6,217 USD 
• TANZANIA: Mass media and community outreach activities were used in a national campaign to deliver 18 million free long-lasting insecticidal nets to uncovered sleeping spaces | Total cost ≈ 2,644,730 USD

Information and communication technology (ICT)

• INDIA: A Health intervention to support adherence to antiretroviral therapy | Total cost ≈ 6,365 USD  
• TANZANIA: An on-demand SMS system providing users with essential information about nine different contraceptive methods to address the limited knowledge, misconceptions, fears and health concerns surrounding contraception | Total cost ≈ 211,851 USD 

Service design approaches 

• SOUTH AFRICA: Syndrome packets and health worker training to improve sexually transmitted disease case management in rural areas | Total cost ≈ 41,861 USD  
• GHANA: A quality improvement programme to reduce maternal and foetal mortality in a regional referral hospital in Accra | Total cost ≈ 2,432,186 USD

Key resources

• The Passage project (IRH-Georgetown University, FHI 360, Johns Hopkins GEAS, PSI, Save the Children, Tearfund) has produced multiple resources on the costing of Norms-Shifting Interventions.  
• Breakthrough RESEARCH, through work led by Avenir Health, has collated SBC cost data identified in the literature into a filterable SBC Cost Repository ,of all identified SBC costs. Breakthrough RESEARCH's technical report on Documenting the Costs of Social Behavior Change Interventions for Health in Low- and Middle-income Countries.