Is your monitoring and evaluation system working for you? Are you able to provide impact reports or grant reports to funders on time? Do you have data sitting in many systems that take a long time to build impact reports? Most monitoring and evaluation systems fail to provide scalable solutions to aggregate results on a regular basis. If they do it may require significant customizations or manual data aggregation. Learn more details at: www.sopact.com/impact-data-measurement
This is an excellent new approach for monitoring and evaluation. While there are many tools available for monitoring and evaluation, data collection, and reporting, without a well-designed impact strategy, funder reporting often becomes chaos. Let us look at the challenges of current systems and discuss potential solutions. If you are a nonprofit or social enterprise struggling to compete against other grantees or investees to raise much-needed grants or impact capital, you’re at the right place! I like your approach to starting a new way of monitoring and evaluation training and monitoring and evaluation course.
Benefits of Monitoring and Evaluation Monitoring and Evaluation implementation, when done effectively, reaps benefits for stakeholders up and down the spectrum of activities carried about by an organization. In general, it provides guidance for strategic decision-making both during and after program execution. Benefits for different stakeholders including: Beneficiaries Follow-up processes (data collection) can be a sign to them that the organization actually cares about results, and making outcomes better Data can be used to improve the efficiency of implementation as well as implementation design (to improve outcomes for beneficiaries) Employees M&E can generate more buy-in and trust in the organization's commitment to the mission if there is a clear effort to not only assess progress but use that assessment to get better at delivering impact For employees in contact with beneficiaries (e.g. "on the ground") conducting evaluation, assessment can also generate more trust between those employees and the beneficiary community. New, often unforeseen, insights can emerge, helping employees discover new, more effective ways to deliver programs and create impact Executive management Determining changes to strategic direction becomes much more data-driven with the ongoing data and analyses from M&E processes. Adaption ideally becomes more agile. With relevant and comprehensive data (both process-related and impact-related) executives can build much more persuasive arguments. Funders Money for impact flows to where the data is and good M&E implementation can open up that flow because it breeds impact credibility and of course a more transparent understanding of how much impact can be generated per investment dollar. Read More: The Catch 22 of Social Impact Measurement Creating a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan Quantitative vs. Qualitative Putting quantitative (or qualitative) tools to work means defining the right indicators to measure. An indicator is a metric used to measure some aspect of a program. In the planning stages, the indicators that will be used throughout the monitoring and evaluation processes should be defined. This enables organizations to truly measure the extent to which what they think or want to happen actually happens. Indicators can be both quantitative and qualitative, depending on what needs to measure and in what ways. Quantitative M&E Indicators Primarily output-focused, they help organizations determine if activities are taking place, when, and to what extent. By definition, numbers are used to communicate quantitative measures (percentages, ratios, $ sums, etc.) Qualitative M&E Indicators Involve subjective terms Often outcome-focused, they can help organizations determine if a change has occurred by gathering perceptions from beneficiaries. Data accuracy can often be difficult to assess given the subjective nature of the collecting judgments about change (see example below) Examples of M&E indicators Using the example of a social enterprise that employs a 1-for-1 model (you buy a pair of shoes, we donate a pair of shoes to a person in need) we can examine some potential indicators for their donation program over a period of one year. Quantitative Number of shoes donated Number of lives affected Amount of money saved in the beneficiary group (not having to buy shoes) Qualitative Perception of change in the quality of life after receiving shoes (survey beneficiaries) Types of opportunities generated by the reception of shoes (defined by beneficiaries) Using a combination of Indicators to Determine Attribution As we can see, a pure count of shoes donated doesn't tell us what impact has been generated. It only implies. By also collecting qualitative, outcomes-focused data the organization gets a better idea of the impacts of those shoes for people who before did not have them. They could also measure income level before and after the shoes (for adults), or measure the number of school days attended (for children). The best indicators help organizations also make clear a clear attribution between the intervention (shoes given) and the impact(s) generated. In this example, there are many other variables that could contribute to an increase in income level or school days attended. Gathering qualitative data, specifically asking to what extent the shoes had to do with any observed changes in those areas would help to increase the level of attribution the organization might report. Read More: Foundations of Social Impact Assessment
Time to work for organization that believes in evidence based decisions. Organizations not committed to social impact with real change will not survive
First of all M&E is a broad term. It can mean different things to different users. Salesforce is useful for program/data management. That said there are many aspects such as collecting offline data, creating flexible framework to aggregate results, impact data analytics, qualitative analysis etc - these aspects are difficult, time consuming and requires lot of customization in Salesforce
Is your monitoring and evaluation system working for you? Are you able to provide impact reports or grant reports to funders on time? Do you have data sitting in many systems that take a long time to build impact reports? Most monitoring and evaluation systems fail to provide scalable solutions to aggregate results on a regular basis. If they do it may require significant customizations or manual data aggregation.
Learn more details at: www.sopact.com/impact-data-measurement
This is an excellent new approach for monitoring and evaluation. While there are many tools available for monitoring and evaluation, data collection, and reporting, without a well-designed impact strategy, funder reporting often becomes chaos. Let us look at the challenges of current systems and discuss potential solutions. If you are a nonprofit or social enterprise struggling to compete against other grantees or investees to raise much-needed grants or impact capital, you’re at the right place! I like your approach to starting a new way of monitoring and evaluation training and monitoring and evaluation course.
Benefits of Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring and Evaluation implementation, when done effectively, reaps benefits for stakeholders up and down the spectrum of activities carried about by an organization. In general, it provides guidance for strategic decision-making both during and after program execution.
Benefits for different stakeholders including:
Beneficiaries
Follow-up processes (data collection) can be a sign to them that the organization actually cares about results, and making outcomes better
Data can be used to improve the efficiency of implementation as well as implementation design (to improve outcomes for beneficiaries)
Employees
M&E can generate more buy-in and trust in the organization's commitment to the mission if there is a clear effort to not only assess progress but use that assessment to get better at delivering impact
For employees in contact with beneficiaries (e.g. "on the ground") conducting evaluation, assessment can also generate more trust between those employees and the beneficiary community.
New, often unforeseen, insights can emerge, helping employees discover new, more effective ways to deliver programs and create impact
Executive management
Determining changes to strategic direction becomes much more data-driven with the ongoing data and analyses from M&E processes. Adaption ideally becomes more agile.
With relevant and comprehensive data (both process-related and impact-related) executives can build much more persuasive arguments.
Funders
Money for impact flows to where the data is and good M&E implementation can open up that flow because it breeds impact credibility and of course a more transparent understanding of how much impact can be generated per investment dollar.
Read More: The Catch 22 of Social Impact Measurement
Creating a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Quantitative vs. Qualitative
Putting quantitative (or qualitative) tools to work means defining the right indicators to measure. An indicator is a metric used to measure some aspect of a program. In the planning stages, the indicators that will be used throughout the monitoring and evaluation processes should be defined. This enables organizations to truly measure the extent to which what they think or want to happen actually happens.
Indicators can be both quantitative and qualitative, depending on what needs to measure and in what ways.
Quantitative M&E Indicators
Primarily output-focused, they help organizations determine if activities are taking place, when, and to what extent.
By definition, numbers are used to communicate quantitative measures (percentages, ratios, $ sums, etc.)
Qualitative M&E Indicators
Involve subjective terms
Often outcome-focused, they can help organizations determine if a change has occurred by gathering perceptions from beneficiaries.
Data accuracy can often be difficult to assess given the subjective nature of the collecting judgments about change (see example below)
Examples of M&E indicators
Using the example of a social enterprise that employs a 1-for-1 model (you buy a pair of shoes, we donate a pair of shoes to a person in need) we can examine some potential indicators for their donation program over a period of one year.
Quantitative
Number of shoes donated
Number of lives affected
Amount of money saved in the beneficiary group (not having to buy shoes)
Qualitative
Perception of change in the quality of life after receiving shoes (survey beneficiaries)
Types of opportunities generated by the reception of shoes (defined by beneficiaries)
Using a combination of Indicators to Determine Attribution
As we can see, a pure count of shoes donated doesn't tell us what impact has been generated. It only implies. By also collecting qualitative, outcomes-focused data the organization gets a better idea of the impacts of those shoes for people who before did not have them. They could also measure income level before and after the shoes (for adults), or measure the number of school days attended (for children).
The best indicators help organizations also make clear a clear attribution between the intervention (shoes given) and the impact(s) generated. In this example, there are many other variables that could contribute to an increase in income level or school days attended. Gathering qualitative data, specifically asking to what extent the shoes had to do with any observed changes in those areas would help to increase the level of attribution the organization might report.
Read More: Foundations of Social Impact Assessment
Highly useful
Hi mr. Can u help me to know the same commponent of project result monitoring and evaluation report?
My organization still uses paper based monitoring system where we collect data using hard copy paper and use Microsoft excel to capture data.
Time to work for organization that believes in evidence based decisions. Organizations not committed to social impact with real change will not survive
My organizarion was like this, now we have designed most of our system for online implementation
Thanks you for connecting very useful presentation
So nice of you
Which is the best software system i can use in monitoring and evaluation ?
Please review: www.sopact.com/monitoring-and-evaluation-tools-ebook
Thx u
Didn't know salesforce could be used for m&e
First of all M&E is a broad term. It can mean different things to different users. Salesforce is useful for program/data management. That said there are many aspects such as collecting offline data, creating flexible framework to aggregate results, impact data analytics, qualitative analysis etc - these aspects are difficult, time consuming and requires lot of customization in Salesforce