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Today’s critical challenges are complex and require system level change. Issues like ending poverty, reversing biodiversity collapse, creating more equitable and sustainable food systems, or ending health inequalities, will not respond to neat siloed technical interventions. These are not problems we can tackle head on. Rather, we need to change the conditions (systems) that create these problems. Consequently, many of the most ambitious philanthropic foundations are adopting ‘systems...

After eight years, I am leaving Porticus. From January 2025, I'll be starting a new chapter - working in a freelance capacity to support systems change efforts through strong learning, evaluation and strategy. Having worked with the amazing Porticus UK team for the first four years, I moved to Amsterdam in 2020 to work in the central strategy and learning team, supporting colleagues around the globe to embed strategy, evaluation and learning in their work. I loved this work. I learned a...

This five-step framework, developed and tested by a foundation, embeds learning in emergent systems change strategies. It prioritizes the testing of hypotheses and assumptions, uses learning questions, and calls for examining both confirming and disconfirming evidence. --- A framework for embedding learning in systems change strategies and for testing strategic uncertainties. Learning and evaluation approaches that accompany systems change efforts need to fit with and support the emergent...

The Reduced Access Analytical Methods (RAAM) toolkit is a practical resource designed to help humanitarian practitioners overcome monitoring challenges in reduced access environments. Reduced access can be caused by natural disaster, conflict, political instability, or other factors, and typically makes it difficult to conduct normal monitoring of program implementation. The RAAM toolkit offers technical and managerial tools for a menu of analytical methods that can fill information gaps...

Background: The practice and profession of evaluation continue to evolve. Over the years, evaluation scholars and practitioners have developed a broad—and still broadening—range of evaluation approaches. These evaluation approaches are often combined with various study designs in real-world evaluations. To provide an overview of these approaches and designs, and inspired by my son’s love of metro trains, I created an evaluation metro map.    Purpose: The purpose of this article is to...

Background: The Garden of Evaluation Approaches (Montrosse-Moorhead, et al., 2024a) maps evaluation approaches against eight dimensions of practice and situates them in their philosophical orientations and methodological dispositions. Purpose: The Garden’s guiding question is: How do evaluation approaches compare in terms of dimensions that facilitate use and application? Primary intended users are evaluation practitioners, and secondary intended users include ecosystem actors (e.g.,...

Evaluation is a vast field of designs and methods in continuous development. The numerous parameters and choices associated with different methodological options can be difficult to fully understand without deep study and desk review. The motivation for the Periodic Table of Evaluation was to create a one-pager visual that catalogues methodological options and parameters involved in an evaluation design.

The UNDP has been exploring new approaches to M&E to better understand and address complex systems challenges. Traditional linear project-based planning and evaluation methods are insufficient for dealing with the unpredictable nature of such systems. The UNDP’s new Strategic Plan calls for a shift in M&E practices to align with the complexity of today’s global challenges. Key points from the blog post include: Learning and Adapting: There’s a need for continuous learning and adaptation in...

How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

Large publicly funded programmes of research continue to receive increased investment as interventions aiming to produce impact for the world’s poorest and most marginalized populations. At this intersection of research and development, research is expected to contribute to complex processes of societal change. Embracing a co-produced view of impact as emerging along uncertain causal pathways often without predefined outcomes calls for innovation in the use of complexity-aware approaches to...

Research for development (R4D) funding is increasingly expected to demonstrate value for money (VfM). However, the dominance of positivist approaches to evaluating VfM, such as cost-benefit analysis, do not fully account for the complexity of R4D funds and risk undermining efforts to contribute to transformational development. This paper posits an alternative approach to evaluating VfM, using the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund as case studies. Based on a...

In this blog we are sharing a digest of some of the many useful and innovative monitoring, evaluation and learning resources and efforts that have come through the M&E Sandbox in 2022. A lot of these resources have been shared by our community in response to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the launch of the Sandbox (please keep them coming!). We hope you find it useful. We have grouped these efforts and resources under six broad questions: - How do we measure systems...

How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation? The Open Society Foundation’s Fiscal Governance Program found success by focusing on six key approaches, including empowering grantees and relinquishing power. In 2021, an external close-out evaluation by Intention to Impact of the program (which ran for 7 years and gave over $150 million in grants) revealed something pretty remarkable—the...

How can we transform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity in todays’ world? How do we move from compliance and accountability to learning – to support better, more timely, decisions? Join GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, as he discusses these questions and others with Special Guest, Søren Haldrup, from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox.

This CDI Practice Paper by Tom Aston and Marina Apgar makes the case for ‘bricolage’ in complexity-aware and qualitative evaluation methods. It provides a framework based on a review of 33 methods to support evaluators to be more intentional about bricolage and to combine the component parts of relevant methods more effectively. It discusses two cases from practice to illustrate the value added of taking a more intentional approach. It further argues that navigating different forms of...