Exit for Sustainability Checklists
Resource type
Author/contributor
- Cekan, Jindra (Author)
Title
Exit for Sustainability Checklists
Abstract
These Checklists for Exit along the Sustainability Project Cycle are based on lessons from ex-post
evaluations that Valuing Voices has done or researched. Ex-post project completion evaluations are rare
and even more so those that consulted partners and participants in the field about sustained impacts.
Over $3.5 trillion has been spent on public foreign aid projects in the past 70 years (OECD 2019) yet we
have evaluated less than 1% of these projects for sustainability. Our Valuing Voices ex-post research of 39
organizations’ evaluations of sustainability shows that most project results decrease (20-90%) as early as
two years ex-post in addition to An Asian Development Bank study of post-completion sustainability
found that “some early evidence suggests that as many as 40% of all new activities are not sustained
beyond the first few years after disbursement of external funding,”
Most project exits are in the last quarter and sustainability handover assumptions are not validated expost. Learning from what was sustained helps us know how to exit for sustainability from the very onset
of the project (green slices) as compared to the typical project cycle (orange), above. We encourage those
tasked with funding, designing, implementing, monitoring & evaluating projects to use these longer
checklists and view the full recording shared with participants. A partial PowerPoint can also be found on
„Sustaining All of our Hard Work“ presentation for the Vienna Evaluation Network (10/20). These
checklists are aimed at donors/designers and implementers of foreign aid projects outcomes and impacts
and can be adapted by local NGOs, national governments, private sector, academics, to create exit plans.
Local participation in creating these and feedback on how well exit is going will help them sustain results.
Institution
Valuing Voices
Date
2020
Accessed
18/02/2021, 13:20
Citation
Cekan, J. (2020). Exit for Sustainability Checklists. Valuing Voices. https://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Exit-For-Sustainability-Checklists-Dec2020-2.pdf
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