On not trying to do everything, everywhere, all at once (why you need an evaluation capability building roadmap)

When you see an organisation give a great presentation about their impact or showcase beautiful reports and dashboards, it’s easy to forget how much work went on behind the scenes to tell their story. Whether it’s a great graphic showing change over time or a well-crafted report full of stories of change, impact reporting is the externally visible result of an organisation’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) capability, which can take years to build.

By MEL capability, we mean the combination of skills, processes, and systems an organisation needs to effectively track, evaluate, and learn from its work, and demonstrate its impact. This can include designing frameworks and logic models, setting up systems to store and manage data, designing surveys and other data collection tools, and analysing and reporting data.

Getting started can be daunting, especially when the whole organisation is new to MEL. You know where you want to go, but you don’t know how to get there. While the destination is important, if your sole focus is on achieving the shiny products at the end (the glossy report or the fancy dashboard) your MEL journey is going to feel frustratingly slow. But if you’re strategic about what you focus on and when, each step along the way can have benefits that stand alone. It can be a long journey but with a clear destination, and a map of how to get there, it can also be a rewarding one.

If you started without a map, you might find yourself stuck in the ‘messy middle’, which can be equally frustrating. An evaluation textbook or impact measurement course will teach you a structured process to follow: Step 1: a theory of change or program logic, Step 2: define and select indicators of change, Step 3: build surveys, and so on. But the reality for many organisations is that they’ve had to ‘build the plane while flying it’ – often with limited time and resources. Organisations get started in different ways, doing what they can with what they have, and shifting focus to respond to changes in the organisation, like staffing, programs, and funding. If this sounds like your organisation, your MEL capability might feel more like a patchwork than a cohesive system right now. That’s not a downfall – it’s a sign you’re making progress with what you have and that’s something to be proud of.

If any of this sounds familiar or you’re feeling frustrated with your MEL, it might be time to take stock of where you are now and create a clear plan for the future – what we call a MEL roadmap.

A MEL roadmap helps an organisation to:

• celebrate progress to date and build on it, rather than starting from scratch
• establish a shared vision for evaluation across the organisation
• make strategic decisions about where to invest resources, instead of having scattered, disjointed projects
• break the work into manageable projects that align with its funding and capacity
• choose evaluation activities that are suitable for its objectives, resources, and capacity
• ensure that MEL activities meet the needs of the organisation and its stakeholders.

If this sounds like something your organisation could benefit from, feel free to reach out to learn more about how we can help. And if you’d like to know more about how our MEL roadmap has helped other organisations, stay tuned for a case study on our work with Health Care Consumers Association.