Cash Coordination Tip Sheet

Cash and voucher assistance (CVA) makes up a growing proportion of overall humanitarian response, with an estimated $4.7 billion delivered worldwide in 2018, up from $2.8Bn in 2016. Given this, the effective coordination of CVA is an increasingly critical part of ensuring a quality humanitarian response.

The CALP Network’s 2018 State of the World’s Cash report found that ad hoc and unreliable CVA coordination was having significant operational impacts, driven by confusion about where cash coordination sits in the system and who is accountable, and by the limited commitment of humanitarian actors to use shared mechanisms.

In most contexts where CVA is a part of a humanitarian response a Cash Working Group (CWG) has been created to support its effective coordination across the response. In 2019, CWGs were reported in 39 countries. While decisions remain pending on some key global coordination issues, practice-based experience of these groups is growing. Feedback received by the CALP Network from CWGs has highlighted a need for accessible guidance and resources around CVA coordination, and for learning from CWG experiences to be more systematically shared. To address this, the CALP Network has developed this tip sheet, intended to give practical hints and tips to support effective cash coordination and provide an accessible guide to existing resources, addressing key operational issues.