1 / 24

EASY-ECO Vienna 2008

Stephen Powell, Joakim Molander & Ivona Čelebičić. Assessment of Outcome Mapping as a tool for evaluating and monitoring support to civil society organisations. EASY-ECO Vienna 2008. proMENTE social research, Sarajevo. Who are we.

darci
Télécharger la présentation

EASY-ECO Vienna 2008

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Stephen Powell, Joakim Molander & Ivona Čelebičić Assessment of Outcome Mapping as a tool for evaluating and monitoring support to civil society organisations EASY-ECO Vienna 2008 proMENTE social research, Sarajevo

  2. Who are we • Steve Powell & Ivona ČelebičićproMENTE social research, Sarajevo • Joakim Molander: at the time of the evaluation, First Secretary at the Swedish Embassy, Sarajevo • Report: www.promente.org/sida2eng

  3. Background • Govt. in B&H barely functional • Civil society fills the gap? •  Support people and networks • How to evaluate? • OM

  4. Evaluation TOR • Explorative evaluation of six civil society projects • Sida-funded civil society programming: lessons on sustainability • Exploration of OM as a tool

  5. Messages • OM worked well for civil society evaluation • OM plays well with other approaches • Sustainability ↔ focus on “key players” • OM can be part of a patchwork, rather than monolithic, approach to M&E

  6. Our project in B&H: 1 donor, 3 framework partners, 6 implementing partners, 6 projects: 2007

  7. OM: 12 steps Focus on outcomes Considering all the dimensions of strategy Helping the implementing partner to learn Internal M &E

  8. Method: timeframe Baseline Final assessment

  9. Method: OM • Special use of OM for external evaluation • Mission, vision, progress markers, outcome challenge • Assessment of planning strategies using strategy maps • OM questionnaires • OM interview with boundary partners (+ relevance interviews) • OM interview with implementing partners (+ relevance interviews) • Writing evaluation-start Outcome Journals • Confirming evaluation-start Outcome Journals • OM questionnaires (same as evaluation-start) • OM interview with boundary partners (on the basis of evaluation-start interview) (+ relevance interviews) • OM interview with implementing partners (on the basis of evaluation-start interview) (+ relevance interviews) • Assessment of management progress using existing strategy maps • Mission and vision: still relevant? Changed focus? • Gathering contextual information and intervention timeline Baseline interimfinal assessment

  10. Message 1: OM worked well with civil society evaluation • Most organisations succeeded in redefining changes in a small group of boundary partners as the main component of their vision • NGOs enthusiastic!? • Focus on contribution is a big relief • Gives richer feedback • Strategy maps inspire and organise thinking about different dimensions of planning • OM standard method and questionnaires, (and interviews?) showed projects making progress towards their vision • Consider problem-based rather than vision-based programming. Vision is not always about boundary partner change

  11. Message 2: OM plays well with other approaches

  12. 2a: Qualitative methods • Gained a lot of additional information with systematic content analysis of independent “relevance interviews” • “A good part of the population is used to some sort of humanitarian aid, some sort of social help, mercy, call it what you will. This means that nobody has to work and, at the same time, they get something. We can set our sights lower but we don’t need to invest anything.”

  13. 2b: quantitative analysis • For four projects, a customised questionnaire was made on the basis of progress markers. • Questionnaire filled in at baseline and again at final assessment • Results from around 100 baseline and 100 final assessment questionnaires compared on a per-project basis. • Validation of OM evaluation methods? • Less clear progress with the least educated

  14. 2b: quantitative analysis male female • Small but significant overall improvement • Corresponds to information from OM interviews & journals • Women start lower than men and improve more than men • In spite of a possible tendency to “raise the bar” during the project “soft” interpretation Results for one project: average scores on progress marker questionnaires  at baseline  at evaluation end

  15. 2c: implementing partners and boundary partners do not agree on “difficulty” of progress markers  involve boundary partners in planning!! – especially the poor Average baseline score for one project Love to see / like to see / expect to see

  16. 2d: problems with OM + RBM • Avoiding a double workload: • OM for monitoring OM for planning and reporting • Better planning: OM could/should be adopted by donors from the project application stage (or as a hybrid) • Donors have to want to help organisations to learn, at the cost of demonstrating effectiveness

  17. Message 3: Sustainability ↔ focus on real people!

  18. 3a: differentiate your boundary partners • Especially in civil society, boundary partner groups can be usefully divided into "less powerful", "potentially powerful" and "powerful". • Even within one group, distinguish clearly between partners who are at different levels of development towards, or agreement with,the outcome challenge.

  19. 3b: focus on “key players” • = boundary partners or implementing partners?? • They believe that change is possible through the efforts of individuals. • Civil society not a mass movement! Handful of key (“career”) activists and organisations • They have “first name and family name” and are not interchangeable or easily replaceable; yet invisible on paper

  20. 3c: A taboo: motivation • Why would these people want to play along? Money a taboo? If we aren’t using sticks, do we have juicy carrots? • Careers advice for activists? Business support for NGOs?

  21. 3d: Another taboo: personality • Effective activists are not necessarily effective bureaucrats (Easterly). Should they be? • Personality is hard to change Differential skills are needed (talking to parliament, then villagers)

  22. Message 4: OM can be part of a patchwork, rather than monolithic, approach to M&E

  23. 4a: the monolithic approach Program Project A Project B Impacts … outcomes … outputs … • Control: gathering data via a chain in which every link has a vested interest in lying • Monitoring: ticking boxes at the expense of strategic thinking and organisational learning • Evaluation: Can you calculate impacts by aggregating outputs? Are NGOs competent to measure outcome and impact directly? Is it their job? Causation Data aggregation • RBM: killing the birds of project and program planning, control, monitoring and evaluation with one stone?

  24. 4b: OM is only part of a (patchwork) solution • Better control: release NGOs from exhausting box-ticking and implement fair random checking of outputs. • Better planning and monitoring: use OM where appropriate • Better management: in exchange, require elements of strategic planning and organisational learning. • Better evaluation: • Demonstrate donor-relevant impact: commission independent, external investigations of society change and why it happens/happened • Sharpen the focus: help NGOs to do empirical explorations of a selection of specific issues that really interest them • OM isn’t everything

More Related