This paper presents findings from research on how blended finance actors use and define different key concepts, and what implications these understandings have for evaluators. By increasing awareness of key terms and their use, the paper can contribute to facilitating the evaluation process, simplifying the communication of findings and results, and ease collaboration between different actors. It provides a useful framework for thinking about core concepts related to blended finance, differences in how these are used today, and the implications this has for evaluation methods and approaches. The work will be of interest to monitoring and evaluation departments, development finance institutions, international financial institutions, impact investors, private foundations and others interested in blended finance and its role in contributing to sustainable development.

This paper is the first in a series of three working papers from the OECD/DAC EvalNet Working Group on Evaluating Blended Finance.