NGO support toolkit (English)  >  Technical support  >  Project management 

Monitoring

Project managers will need help to develop ways of monitoring and managing performance of a project to ensure that it stays on track and makes proper progress towards its defined targets.

Good monitoring will allow project managers to gather information to be able to provide early warning about problems in achieving the project’s indicators and targets. This can allow managers to make mid-course corrections where particular methods and approaches are not working, and get authorisation for changes in the targets or budgets where necessary. In some cases, timely monitoring will reveal unforeseen obstacles or unexpected opportunities which call for a complete rethinking of the project’s assumptions and strategy.

A NGO / CBO support provider (NSP) can use the technical support process to ensure that the data collection needed for its own reporting requirements (to donors) is incorporated into its partner NGOs’ systems. However, it is important to distinguish between monitoring that is required by contractual obligations, such as aggregate project outputs in a given time period, and the type of monitoring that is genuinely useful for understanding and improving implementation as it happens.

Reporting for donors requires getting different implementing NGOs and CBOs to use and monitor the same core indicators, in order to allow aggregation and reporting onwards. However, getting partner organisations to understand and use monitoring for good project management will depend on such factors as individual managers’ skills and experience, existing management and monitoring systems elsewhere in the organisation, and the technical complexity of the project’s methods.

The starting point is usually a clear understanding of the monitoring and reporting required either by the NSP or for other contractual reasons, which will normally involve easy-to-gather quantitative data such as project inputs and outputs. Project managers could be encouraged to supplement this with quantitative and qualitative data that helps them understand how well the project’s scheduled outcomes are being achieved, as well as the factors that are helping or hindering.

Support needs will vary. An inexperienced NGO or CBO may need extensive support with establishing its first performance management system. Equally, NSP staff or consultants can assist NGO staff in mapping out their existing data collection strategies, identifying strengths and weaknesses for monitoring purposes, and helping to implement new data collection systems. Some managers may ask for very focussed assistance on particular areas such as data collection or recording techniques.

Issues to consider

• It is important for both the NSP and the NGO to understand the difference between technical support to ensure the NGO meets reporting requirements to donors and technical support to encourage the use of internal monitoring data by managers within the NGO itself.
• Many NGOs will have multiple donors and various reporting requirements. The facilitation process should seek to build an integrated system that incorporates these various requirements, rather than a system that meets only the requirements of the NSP.
• It is common for some staff and volunteers in NGOs to show impatience with monitoring tools, because they perceive it either as something that interferes with the work, or as a lack of trust by management. It is important to clearly explain the tangible benefits of performance monitoring for improving results for clients.
• Where the NSP is also providing significant funding, there may be a degree of nervousness on the part of the NGO or CBO in accepting assistance with performance monitoring. Management may feel they are being evaluated by the NSP in the process. It is important to reassure that the main purpose of technical support is to build their capacity, not to test or evaluate them.

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