Our customized services are suited for both small and large organizations, with the ultimate goal of ensuring effective implementation of M&E / impact assessment.

Small organizations may need such services for a limited period of time without the burden of recruiting or contracting permanent staff or consultants. Using our services for a while may also help small organizations lacking M&E expertise to better understand which is the most suitable approach in the long run.

Large organizations, with dedicated Impact Assessment or M&E staff, can use our services to become more efficient in proving the impact of their work. They may also occasionally go through overloads, when it would be beneficial to transfer some of the workload towards a third party. Or they may simply need a third party opinion, or require some of our services for a limited period at the beginning of a new program, until their own staff is well prepared.

All the services can be provided through online work, but based on customer needs we can also organize site visits and workshops to use a more "classical" approach in delivering our services.

Design Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) System
(data collection system)

Although building from scratch an M&E system requires substantial effort, it begins to pay off soon enough if the organization has a strong commitment to create added value for its beneficiaries, or if it needs to understand and demonstrate the real life impact of its work. To make thing easier and streamline the process, we can assist with any of the following steps:

• Define the performance metrics (performance indicators). While understanding what to measure is the first step in implementing truly effective activities, choosing the right balance between tangible and intangible metrics is both a matter of science and experience. We never use “off-the-shelf” metrics and then try to shape the client organization’s activities around them, because this can be the shortest way to disaster. Instead, we always dedicate the necessary effort to identify the relevant metrics to each organization, based on consultations with the project/program team and its stakeholders.
• Design the required metrics collection tools and test them. This is a crucial step, as it ensures the organization measures what actually matters and will not fall in "analysis paralysis"
• Likewise, adjusting the metrics and the metrics collection tools as a result of the above-mentioned testing is an important step in M&E System design
• Rigorously measure the baseline metrics to provide a valid future reference point
• Create the working methodology and procedures to collect, process and report the performance metrics, and then train the client organization’s staff in making efficient use of them
• Train and/or coach the client organization’s staff in charge with the impact assessment/M&E work

Design Management Information System (MIS)

Quite often organizations have lots of data available but can’t make 100% use of it for reasons such as: data that is not properly managed, staff members don’t know what data is available or how to access the relevant data, infrastructure that doesn’t support easy sharing of data, making it rather complicated to access it. Together we can find the most suitable solution for an organization’s specific needs, taking into consideration the challenges it faces and its future development plans.

Manage Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) System
(data collection system)

We have over 15 years’ experience in impact assessment/M&E work in various fields and we designed M&E Systems for organizations implementing programs worth over 12 billion USD. We can act as an organization’s Impact assessment/M&E manager or consultant. This includes the tasks listed above under “Design M&E System”, as well as systematic data collection. Becoming familiar with the organization’s work is a condition of this process, and therefore, based on our experience, we can even make suggestions regarding organizational management improvement steps, aimed at maximizing the impact created by the resources put to use by the organization.

Improvement of the impact work

Some organizations, despite collecting lots of data, can still feel they are somehow missing the point, that they are not collecting what is relevant, and therefore are not able to clearly demonstrate that their work makes a real difference. In such case, we can help in various ways:

• analyze the correlations between the metrics being collected and the expected results
• analyze the data collection processes and its results
• based on the analysis, adjust the collected metrics
• based on the analysis, adjust the implemented activities

Strategic planning and strategic alignment

In our past experience we provided consultancy for some organizations that, despite working hard to reach their specific objectives, were complaining that they don’t achieve the goals fast enough, efficient enough and even that they didn’t reach the objectives at all. In all such cases a simple and careful analysis revealed that there barely was a minimal - if any - connection between the implemented work, the program objectives and the real life. Aligning program activities with its objectives and defining the right metrics usually solves the cases of this nature.