D-Rev
Top Health Nonprofit
Impact Audited
Impact: $540 provides an additional year of healthy life to a jaundiced newborn. Read More
Newborn Health meets the benchmark for high cost-effectiveness. The nonprofit averts a disability-adjusted life year for less than the country's G.D.P. per capita.
Note: The impact of this program may not be representative of the entire operation of D-Rev.
Governance: Passes checks
Mission
D-Rev (design revolution) is a nonprofit medical device company that focuses on health needs that affect the poor. D-Rev's products are sold in 70+ countries and have treated over 600,000 patients who otherwise would not have access to quality care.
Cause
Health
Rated Program
Newborn Health
Location
59 countries
Location
San Francisco, CA
Website
Donations processed by the nonprofit.
Cause
Health
Rated Program
Newborn Health
Location
59 countries
Location
San Francisco, CA
Website
Rated Program
Additional analysis available: Download
Program
Newborn Health
Activities
D-Rev designs, develops, licenses and distributes affordable phototherapy devices to treat jaundiced newborns in low-resource health facilities.
Program Type
Community Health
Beneficiaries Served
People living in poverty
Geography
59 countries
Outcomes: Changes in people's lives. They can be caused by a nonprofit.
Costs: The money spent by nonprofits and their partners and beneficiaries.
Impact: The cost to achieve an outcome.
Cost-effectiveness: A judgment as to whether the cost was "worth" the outcome.
Outcomes
Outcome Metric
A year of healthy life for a jaundiced newborn.
To calculate impact, we estimate how many outcomes the nonprofit caused.
Data Source
D-Rev collected outcome data on devices sold, survey data on access to neonatal phototherapy, and the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) weight of kernicterus reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (Global Burden of Disease).
Time Period of Data
Jan. 1, 2013, to Dec. 31, 2015
Ratings are based on data the nonprofit itself collects on its work. We use the most recent year with sufficient data. Typically, this data allows us to calculate direct changes in participants' lives, such as increased income.
Method for Attributing Outcomes
We model counterfactual success using D-Rev and Stanford University's fieldwork on the number of hospitals providing effective jaundice treatment, and Bhutani et al.'s research on the burden of disease associated with hyperbilirubinemia.
To determine causation, we take the outcomes we observe and subtract an estimate of the outcomes that would have happened even without the program.
Cost
Data Source
Cost data reported by D-Rev and data and assumptions about partner and beneficiary costs.
All monetary costs are counted, whether they are borne by a nonprofit service deliverer or by the nonprofit’s public and private partners.
Impact
Impact Statement
$540 provides an additional year of healthy life to a jaundiced newborn.
Confidence in Impact Calculation
ImpactMatters assigned a rating of 4/5 for the audit team's confidence in its impact estimate for the Newborn Health program.
We calculate impact, defined as the change in outcomes attributable to a program divided by the cost to achieve those outcomes.
Rating
Benchmark for Rating
Impact ratings of community health programs are based on the cost of a disability-adjusted life year (DALY) averted relative to the G.D.P. per capita of the country in which the program operates. Programs receive 5 stars if they avert a DALY for less than than the G.D.P. per capita, and 4 stars if they avert a DALY for less than three times G.D.P. per capita. If a nonprofit reports impact but doesn't meet the benchmark for cost-effectiveness, it earns 3 stars.
Determination
The nonprofit averts a disability-adjusted life year for less than the country's G.D.P. per capita.
Why We Could Be Wrong
We welcome your suggestions for improving our methodology. Our methodology section includes explanations of how we mitigate these issues.
- There could be multiple important outcomes not captured in our analysis.
- D-Rev may be spending additional money in order to serve harder-to-reach and/or particularly valuable populations.
- In the absence of better data, we assume uniform counterfactual rates for programs, at the risk of masking variation across nonprofits.
- Our estimates rely on data made public by D-Rev on its website, annual reports, financial statements and Form 990s.
- We only analyze programs that meet our criteria. As a result, this report may not fully reflect the impact of D-Rev.
- We do not assess what explains the nonprofit's cost-effectiveness.
We assign a rating to the nonprofit using the rubric:
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There are indications of governance or financial health issues at the nonprofit.
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After being given an opportunity, the nonprofit chose not to publish impact information.
We are not yet issuing this level of star rating.
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The rated program does not meet our benchmark for cost-effectiveness.
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The rated program is cost-effective.
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The rated program is highly cost-effective.
Nonprofit Comment
(Adapted from the Impact Audit.) We thank ImpactMatters for its thorough and rich audit of D-Rev’s systems and impact for 2013-15, including characterizing our strengths and identifying areas for improvement. As the smallest organization that IM has audited to date ($1.7 million and 11 employees in 2016), we are encouraged that IM considers D-Rev to be at the most advanced stage of organizational development (“Scaling”), and thus held to their most rigorous standards. We hope that donors and other organizations see in D-Rev an example of a lean, dedicated team successfully leveraging limited resources for impact at global scale.
— D-Rev
Before publishing, we ask every nonprofit we can to review our work, offer corrections and provide a comment.
Analysis Details
Analysis conducted by ImpactMatters and published on November 22, 2019.
This rating is based on an independent audit by ImpactMatters. Using data from the audit, ImpactMatters analysts calculated impact and assigned a rating.
We welcome corrections. If you are interested in exploring applications of ImpactMatters data, contact us at partnerships@impactmatters.org.
Governance Check
D-Rev passes our governance check.
Overhead spending is reasonable (<35% of total spending)
Charity Navigator has not issued a fraud or mismanagement advisory
D-Rev itself has not reported any material diversions of assets
D-Rev itself has not reported any excess benefit transactions
Source: D-Rev Form 990 and Charity Navigator
How We Calculate Impact
This rating is based on ImpactMatters analysis of the impact of Newborn Health relative to costs. Impact is the change in the social outcomes of people served by the program, net of the change that would have happened even without the program (the “counterfactual”); divided by cost. Learn more.
Rating is a complex exercise and we urge you to read our frequently asked questions for details of how and why we issue these ratings.
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ImpactMatters does not take money from nonprofits for ratings or recommendations.
D-Rev
