Leading in Challenging Times: Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation (SEIEs)- reposted from Medium.com

by | Mar 2, 2017 | Aid effectiveness, Better Evaluation, Corporate Social Responsibility, Dare to Lead, Effective Philanthropy, ex-post evaluation, Foundations, impact evaluation, Impact Investors, international development, Participants, partners, post-project evaluation, SEIE, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation, Valuing Voices

 

Leading in Challenging Times:
Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation (SEIEs)

 

Some American organizations are retrenching, focusing more attention on domestic rather than international programming. Some are pulling back from critique of international development to informing legislators of its benefits; the Center for Global Development’s changed ‘Rethinking US Development Policy’ blog to only “US Development Policy“. UN’s Refugee Agency questions whether to challenge Washington’s tough line on refugees from countries such as Syria, or should it stay quiet in the hopes of protecting its funding [1]?”

Reticence is understandable in this ‘climate’, so to speak, but fear does not change the world, leadership does. Envisioning and creating the world we want gets us there.

There may be no better time to build the evidence base on what works in sustainable development as these are low cost investments if we use national staff and focus research well. We have seen this in the fewer than 1% of all projects that have been evaluated post-closeout for sustainability [2]. At the very least, we can learn what we should do differently in the next design, to fully foster sustainability, once more funding emerges. Many are interested in great results. Hundreds of ‘impact evaluations’ are happening on aid effectiveness; our industry wants to learn what works and what we could do better.

Our SEIE work goes beyond current understanding of ‘impact’ to see what projects our partners and participants can self-sustain ex-post for years to come which is an excellent investment in proving cost-effectiveness. While some governments’ investments can diminish in the short term, national governments, and other funders such as a range of international bilateral and multilateral donors, foundations corporate social responsibility and impact investors do want to invest in provably “sustainable” development [3].

 

Why should we invest in SEIEs?

  • Hundreds of thousands of projects are still being implemented.
  • Millions of participants are still hoping what we are doing together will be sustainable.
  • Billions of dollars, euros, kwacha, pesos, rupees are being spent on new projects that need to be designed and implemented for future sustainability.

 

Implementing organizations could be fearful to see what remains once funding and technical assistance are withdrawn, but such a view not only robs our industry of exciting lessons on what did change and was so valued that it was sustained, but also what to not do again. Not returning post-project also short-changes our participants. In our SEIEs, we have found participants and partners creating new ways to carry on, innovating beyond what we could imagine during our assistance.

We also need to start now to design and implement for sustainability. doing SEIEs, we can start to understand the ‘drivers’ behind the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) results with countries tracking some 120 indicators across 17 goals. Currently countries are tracking up to 230 indicators across the 17 Goals [4]. But while such monitoring shows ‘GDP has increased or ‘under-nourishment has decreased’, there is little or no information on what has caused it. Yet doing and SEIE on a large donor-funded programme, we can explore what elements made projects sustainable and how to do more (or less) there and elsewhere. Such sentinel site support for learning about sustained and emerging impacts is key to understand some of the why, for example, did income or health improve.

 

 

Dare to lead, especially in these challenging times. We know of organizations that are doing these evaluations internally, others are publishing them on their sites. Leadership happens at all levels, from internal, technical to managerial and administrative work to external evaluators and consultants as well as public pressure.

 

How can you foster sustained impact?

  • You can advocate for such evaluations
  • You can share the SEIE guidance, below, and start to design and implement, monitor and evaluate sustainably in all projects/ proposals you are designing now.
  • You can see if your organization has done any post-project sustainability evaluations and we can post them on Valuing Voices’ repository, celebrating your organization.

 

We can help you learn how to do these. Our partner, Better Evaluation, just published our Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation as a ‘new’ evaluation ‘theme.’

Guidance there shows you [5]:

1. What is SEIE?
2. Why do SEIE?
3. When to do SEIE?
4. Who should be engaged in the evaluation process?
5. What definitions and methods can be used to do an SEIE?
Resources
References

SEIEs will grow as will examples, discussions, and joy as embracing sustainability sprouts, and sends us progressing in yet-unforeseen ways! We are excited to be in the final stages of receiving a research grant to further guide SEIEs. We will share that news in our next blog.

 

We want to learn from you:

  • What do you think needs to be in place for funders to move beyond the funding cycle and do an SEIE?
  • What would help to make this type of evaluation more widely undertaken?
  • If you have done a post-project evaluation, how did you do it? What were some of the barriers you faced and resources you were able to draw on to overcome them?

 

How can we lead together to Value the Voices of those we serve!?

(Reposted from https://medium.com/@WhatWeValue/leading-in-challenging-times-sustained-and-emerging-impacts-evaluation-seies-617b33bf4d27#.ec7fcg4ty)

 

 

Sources:

[1] Foulkes, I. (2017, February 27). Is there a US diplomacy vacuum at the UN in Geneva? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39080204

[2] Cekan, J. (2015, March 13). When Funders Move On. Retrieved from https://ssir.org/articles/entry/when_funders_move_on

[3] UN DESA. (2011, March 2). Lasting impact of sustainable development. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/sustainable/sustainable-development.html

[4] UN Statistics Division. SDG Indicators: Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved March, 2017, from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/

[5] Cekan, J., Zivetz, L., & P, R. (2016). Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation (SEIE). Retrieved from https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/themes/SEIE

 

Towards responsible donor exiting strategies and practices: Reblog from Tshikululu

by | Oct 8, 2016 | Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, Donors, Exit strategies, Social Investment, South Africa, Sustainability, Sustainable development

 

I am delighted to repost the blog on Responsible Donor Exit from Tshikululu, a Social Investment advisory firm in South Africa that I met at the European Evaluation Society conference last week in Holland [1]. The short report outlines different choices of Phase down, Phase out, or Phase over for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As we in foreign aid evaluation have noted, donors should have set criteria for engaging with grantees to facilitate the transition and exit from programs, including exit plans and designing exit in from the beginning. What this report adds is open communication and joint agreements on timelines, exit grants and post-exit ‘scans’ that may foster further partnerships. Especially pleased to see them recommending “programme beneficiaries should therefore be empowered to direct the development processes that affect them.” Enjoy…

 

Towards responsible donor exiting strategies and practices

10 May 2016 | Silvester Hwenha |

Social investment has evolved as the result of a number of factors, including a growing interest by high net worth individuals and institutional investors in tackling social issues at the local, national or global level. Social investors have also become increasingly relevant in many countries as a result of mounting social challenges amid declining public funds to provide social services. The rationale for social investment is based on the realisation that social or environmental factors can impact a company’s bottom line and therefore are important factors in business. Besides, it has long been acknowledged by civic society and business that government alone cannot confront and solve all of society’s problems.

Social investors typically channel their funds through non-profit entities including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community based organisations (CBOs) to deliver social and environmental programmes in communities where such programmes are required. However, while social challenges require long term interventions to address, social investments often support programmes in short funding cycles. In many instances social investment funds are redirected to other social challenges thus necessitating exiting of programmes.

Exiting programmes is usually a highly sensitive and difficult process for donors, grantees and beneficiaries. For most donors, the reasons for exiting programmes include changing priorities and/or leadership, dwindling resources and the potential threat on programmes by the emergence of political instability. Despite having legitimate cause to exit programmes, donor agencies, foundations, trusts and corporate donors often do so with little advance notice, communication and consultation with programme partners.

 

Source:

[1] Hwenha, S. (2016, May 10). Towards responsible donor exiting strategies and practices. https://web.archive.org/web/20161002091204/http://www.tshikululu.org.za/insights-opinions/entry/towards-responsible-donor-exiting-strategies-and-practices