NGO support toolkit (English)  >  Monitoring and evaluation 

Evaluations

Monitoring systems enable NGOs to track activities on an ongoing basis. However, NGOs also need to know about the quality of their programmes and whether their activities are having any effect. Thus most NGOs and NSPs should periodically evaluate their work. An NGO/CBO support provider with technical expertise can play a valuable role in assisting NGO and CBO partners in undertaking evaluations of their work.

This support may be purely financial, for instance providing funding for an external consultant led evaluation. Alternatively NSP staff may be able to support the NGO or CBO at various points in the evaluation process: framing evaluation questions; designing the study; collecting data; analysing data, report writing and drawing out recommendations for practice; disseminating results. An NGO or CBO may also request an NSP to conduct the evaluation on its behalf, or perhaps jointly. This can be a useful collaboration for both partners.

The two main evaluation types of interest to NGOs and NSPs are process evaluations and outcome or impact evaluations. Put simply, process evaluations focus on how well activities are implemented, while outcome or impact evaluations focus on what was achieved. In other words, process evaluations focus on effort and outputs, while outcome and impact evaluations focus on end results and actual change.

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