First, making the case for improving the quality or quantity of aid (the major achievement of the MDGs).
Meanwhile, there has been an increasing focus on the quality, rather than simply the quantity, of aid.
It is an index -- based on a variety of components, not just quantity of aid -- that ranks the contribution developed nations make to the developing world.
The CGD study does not simply rank countries' ratios of foreign aid to GDP, but adjusts them to capture the quality as well as the quantity of aid.
There need not be a specific quantity of aid below which it will do little and above which it will make all the difference.
And on aid itself, the excitement over reaching the target for the quantity of aid has allowed the government to resist pressure for the quality of aid to be improved as well.
Nine activists from Israel, Britain, Germany and the United States left the port here in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus with a small quantity of aid aboard their catamaran, Irene, which sailed under a British flag.
The British prime minister wants us to stop talking about the quantity of aid we give, and "start talking about what I call the 'golden thread', which is you only get real long-term development through aid if there is also a golden thread of stable government, lack of corruption, human rights, the rule of law, transparent information".
In the meantime, I have been attached to a new regiment - a well resourced outfit who will start to deliver large quantities of aid into Basra.
Landslides have now made trekking routes and paths lethal, but helicopters are often grounded by bad weather and are too few to distribute anywhere near the quantities of aid required.
