by Jindra Cekan | Jan 9, 2021 | Denmark, Evaluation, ex-post evaluation, Finland, impact evaluation, Netherlands, Nordics, Norway, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Sweden, Valuing Voices
Upcoming Webinar: Lessons from Nordic / the
Netherlands’ ex-post project evaluations: 14 Jan 2021
In June-August 2020, Preston Stewart, our Valuing Voices intern, conducted through government databases of the four Nordic countries – Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark – and the Netherlands to identify ex-post evaluations of government-sponsored projects. The findings and recommendations for action are detailed in a four-part white paper series, beginning with a paper called The Search.
We would like to invite you to a presentation of our findings, and a discussion of what can be learned about:
1) the search process,
2) how ex-post evaluations are defined and categorized,
3) what was done well by each country’s ex-posts,
4) sustainability-related findings and lessons, and
5) what M&E experts in each country can improve on ex-post evaluation practices.
One big finding is that there were only 32 evaluations that seemed to be ex-post project, and only 1/2 of them actually were at least 2 years after project closure.
We have many more lessons about conflicting definitions, that ex-post evaluation is not the norm in the evaluations processes of the five governments, that development programs could, if committed to ex-post evaluation, learn about sustainability by engaging with the findings from many more such evaluations, and to increase accountability to the public and for transparent learning, ex-post evaluations should be shared in public, easy-to-access online repositories.
Join us!
REGISTER: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/webinar-lessons-from-nordic-the-netherlands-ex-post-project-evaluations-tickets-132856426147
Your ticket purchase entitles you to the webinar, its meeting recording, associated documents, and online Sustainability Network membership for resources and discussion. Payment on a sliding, pay-as-you-can scale.
by Jindra Cekan | Dec 18, 2020 | CSR, Evaluation, Sustainability, Sustainable development
Interview repost: Why Measure & Evaluate Corporate Sustainability Projects?
A CSR firm in Central Europe asked me to talk about sustainability, evaluation, and Corporate Social Responsibility. We had a terrific interview – please click thru to: https://www.besmarthead.com/cs/media/post/smartheadtalks-2-jindra-cekan-eng
The topics we discussed include:
* Sustainability in CSR involves value creation through benefits-creation for both companies and consumers
* Projects feeding into the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals may not be sustained over the long-term and we must return to evaluate what could be sustained and what emerged ex-post
* Scale measurable and meaningful impact investment through the transformation of development nonprofits’ programming + approach
* Three activities in sustainability that companies can start doing right away, that you would recommend to any company anywhere in the world
And Very Happy Holidays to all… may our lives and world be more sustainable in 2021….
by Jindra Cekan | Dec 10, 2020 | Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Credit, Evaluation, ex-post evaluation, microcredit, Microenterprise, Sustainable development
Reblog: ITAD/CRS “Lessons from an ex-post evaluation – and why we should do more of them”
Reposted from: https://www.itad.com/article/lessons-from-an-ex-post-evaluation-and-why-we-should-do-more-of-them/
We’ll be sharing learning from the evaluation alongside CRS colleagues at the Savings Led Working Group session on Members Day of the SEEP Annual Conference – so pop by if you would like to learn more.
What is an ex-post evaluation?
Ex-post evaluations are (by definition) done after the project has closed. There is no hard and fast rule on exactly when an ex-post evaluation should be done but as the aim of an ex-post evaluations is to assess the sustainability of results and impacts, usually some time will need to have passed to make this assessment.
A little bit about EFI
EFI was a Mastercard Foundation-funded program in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Zambia and Uganda whose core goal was to ensure that vulnerable households experienced greater financial inclusion. Within EFI, Private Service Providers (PSPs) formed and facilitated savings groups using CRS’ Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) methodology, with the SILC groups responsible for paying the PSP a small fee for the services that they provide.
This payment is intended to improve sustainability by incentivising the groups’ facilitators to form and train new groups, as well as providing continued support to existing groups, beyond the end of the project.
A little bit about the evaluation
So, if the aim of the PSP model is sustainability, you need an evaluation that can test this! Evaluation at the end of project implementation can assess indications of results that might be sustained into the future. However, if you wait until some time has passed after activities have ended, then there is much clearer evidence on which activities and results are ongoing – and how likely these are to continue. Uganda was also a great test case for the evaluation because CRS hadn’t provided any follow-on support.
Our evaluation set out to assess the extent to which the EFI-trained PSPs and their SILC groups were still functioning 19 months after the programme ended and the extent to which the PSP model had contributed to the sustainability of activities and results.
What the ex-post evaluation found
We found a handful of findings that were only possible because it was an ex-post evaluation:
- There were 56% more reported groups among the sampled PSPs at the time of data collection than there were at the end of the project.
- Half of the PSP networks established within the sample are still functioning (to some extent).
- PSPs continued to receive remuneration for the work that they did, 19 months after project closure. However, there were inconsistencies in frequency and scale of remuneration, as well as variation in strategies to sensitize communities on the need to pay.
This only covers a fraction of the findings but we were able to conclude that the PSP model appeared to be highly sustainable. The evaluation also found that there were challenges to sustainability which could be addressed in future delivery of the PSP model. Significantly, the PSP model was designed with sustainability in mind – and this evaluation provides good evidence that PSPs were still operating 19 months after the end of the project.
What made the evaluation possible
We get it. It isn’t always easy to do ex-post evaluations. Evaluations are usually included in donor-implementer contracts, which end shortly after the project ends, leaving implementers without the resources to go back and evaluate 18 months later. This often results in a lack of funding and an absence of project staff. This is also combined with new projects starting up, obscuring opportunities for project-specific findings and learning as it’s not possible to attribute results to a specific project.
In many ways, we were lucky. Itad implements the Mastercard Foundations Savings Learning Lab, a six-year initiative that supports learning among the Foundation’s savings sector portfolio programmes – including EFI. EFI closed in the Learning Lab’s second year and with support from the Foundation and enthusiasm from CRS, we set aside some resource to continue this learning post-project. So, we had funding!
We also worked with incredibly motivated ex-EFI, CRS staff who made time to actively engage in the evaluation process and facilitate links to the PSP network, PSPs and SILC group members. So, we had the people!
And, no-one had implemented a similar PSP model in supported districts of Uganda since the end of EFI. So, we were also able to attribute!
Why we should strive to do more ex-post evaluations
Despite these challenges, and recognising it isn’t always easy, doesn’t mean it is not possible. And with projects like EFI where sustainability was central to its model, we would say it’s essential to assess whether the programme worked and how the model can be improved.
Unfortunately, practitioners and evaluators can shout all we like but the onus is on funders. We need funders to carve out dedicated resource for ex-post evaluations. This is even more important for programmes that have the development of replicable and sustainable models at their core. For some projects, this can be anticipated – and planned for – at project design stage. Other projects may show promise for learning on sustainability, unexpectedly, during implementation. Dedicated funding pots or call-down contracts for ex-post evaluations are just a couple of ways donors might be able to resource ex-post evaluations when there is a clear need for additional learning on the sustainability project results.
This learning should lead to better decision making, more effective use of donor funds and ultimately, more sustainable outcomes for beneficiaries.”
Other Findings:
Some of the other findings of this report on Financial Inclusion are:
RESOURCES: “Finding 1.iii. PSPs continue to receive remuneration for the work that they do; however, there are inconsistencies in frequency and scale of remuneration, as well as variety in strategies to sensitize communities on the need to pay.”
CAPACITIES: “Finding 3.ii. All networks included a core function of “collaboration, information-sharing and problemsolving”; however, networks were not sufficiently supported or incentivized to fulfill complex functions, such as PSP quality assurance or consumer protection, and their coverage area and late implementation limited the continued functioning of networks.”
PARTNERSHIP: “Finding 2.i. Only four of the 24 groups are clearly linked with other stakeholders and two were supported by EFI to create these linkages.”
Consider doing one!
by Jindra Cekan | Nov 20, 2020 | environment, ex-post evaluation, Sustainable development
What makes it Difficult to Evaluate Projects Ex-post: Lessons from WWF
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) generously shared lessons from two ex-posts and in particular what they felt should not have been done in terms of organizational learning. They originally wanted to see whether ”the work done is sustainable and so to provide lessons for the implementing office, donor offices and the wider WWF network about designing and implementing projects to deliver outcomes that are sustained beyond WWF’s involvement.”
They used six criteria for country/ case selection:
This was in line with Valuing Voices’ (Ex-post) Evaluability Checklists.
- Organizational considerations including interest in learning by WWF
- Methodological considerations regarding data access, quality etc.
- Choice of projects, sites, timing to ensure post-closure, contribution of results isolated
WWF Case 1:
The first WWF case examined the importance of evaluating both Sustained and Emerging Impacts (those expected or those that emerged from local efforts or other entrants post-INGO-exit) and managing the ex-post evaluation process, as LWR and World Vision have done.
There were three types of interesting results (refer to Table 1).
- Methodological problems in comparability to final evaluation and impact data as well as choice of project: problems with site/ case and lack of water data comparability as well as the entry of a new NGO garnering benefits (so limited contribution/ isolation of results). WWF tried to mitigate it with good design guidance and ongoing review processes during the ex-post.
- The emergence of new data ex-post about the benefits of the local user association for conflict management and emerging new catchment management
- There were ex-post limitations intrinsic to the species and ecosystem resources on which they rely, specifically species and water. Other problems of not tracking impacts on animals, not learning from evaluations, and not having saved documents might benefit other projects’ quality.
Table 1. WWF Case 1
Some learning might be attributable to the difficulties of evaluating ecosystems or it might provide important cautionary lessons for others considering such ecosystem evaluations.
But overall, it shows that in contexts where one of these criteria are present:
1. original programme having design flaws,
2. poor collection of evidence of progress against the chosen indicators of success,
3. poor documentation retention,
Then, there is limited value to be gained from doing an ex-post evaluation.
WWF Case 2:
The excellent news is that ex-post demonstrated that all three kinds of impact indicators, namely species numbers, forest cover, and conservation area improved (note, data are confidential, thereby not cited below) and that the XX Conservation Area is still managed by the community (Table 2). Also, the team gathered information that living standards had improved, as had, impressively a country-level seed fund and active participation in managing and scientifically learning from their resource.
The second case also highlights typical ex-post methodological evaluation considerations, including choice of sites/ timing:
- not applying a standard monitoring process for the whole programme period, which caused confusion about end of project versus ex-post impact progress
- the ex-post evaluation was planned predicated on the project finishing and staff exit from the area, but there was ongoing financial support of the CSO from the central office for a further two years which meant that this was not a true ex-post evaluation as it happened before the two-year minimum timeframe
- measurement led to ‘anecdotal’ evidence and comparisons made to national statistics rather than change from project evaluations which limits ex-post learning particularly
- there were negative findings of sustainability how well the community appreciated the XXCA and insufficient economic return on investment expectations that some costs such as trash removal were not covered by anticipated tourist revenues.
It also highlights that ecosystem ex-post evaluation is complex, as wildlife number was difficult to methodologically confirm, due to progression in monitoring technologies. A valuable question that WWF shared was “how to assess [continued] benefits to people from natural resource management?”
Table 2: WWF Case 2
WWF found and shared important and appropriate lessons about what these ex-posts brought with them. Most fell into aforementioned categories of Choice of projects, sites, timing, and importantly, the value of considering Methodological considerations regarding data access, quality from project onset.
What was new to us at Valuing Voices was that Organizational considerations including interest in learning by WWF-UK and their partners which is something we have not seen before. Equally, the importance of a solid rationale for asking a country office to participate in such an evaluation, and not imposing an ex-post on a less than enthusiastic program for whom sustainability may not be a priority. This links these cases together, as given limited budgets, WWF and their partners could choose to prioritize design spending, perhaps above final evaluations, especially if local NGOs know donors will leave at project’s end, so funding to improve their internal capacity strengthening might be a larger priority. Knowing the project has an immutable closeout can affect interest at the headquarters, as it can be quite difficult to find funding to evaluate ex-post, and more pressing current work competes. Also, implementing local NGOs/ CBOs could actually know about sustainability far more than donors, hereby eliminating their interest, as an M&E officer recounted. Both organizations could have other priorities, including new projects with new staff, who had less interest in the old project. Staff turnover is an additional, important consideration in whether to do an ex-post.
Table 3: WWF Learning
Given how vital it is to evaluate the sustainability of our environment, including ecosystems and natural capital on which our participants and partners depend, WWF is going ahead on evaluating ecosystems, adding to the vital knowledge base. The Global Environmental Facility is also experimenting on remote-monitoring for the evaluation of ecosystems. USAID’s Water Bureau has also done ex-posts on Water/ Sanitation/ Hygiene.
We have a whole world of sustainability to discover!
by Jindra Cekan | Oct 28, 2020 | Aid effectiveness, Evaluation, Impact, measuring sustainability checklist, post project evaluation, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluations (SEIE)
Sustained Exit? Prove it or Improve it!
(reposted from Medium https://jindracekan.medium.com/sustained-exit-prove-it-or-improve-it-702ac507e2a5)
Do we exit global development projects knowing our impacts are sustained? We hope so. As Professor Bea Rogers of Tufts said after evaluating 12 projects 2 years post-closure ( https://www.fsnnetwork.org/resource/exit-strategies-study), “ Hope is Not a Strategy”, yet too often that is what projects that assume sustainability does. They/we hope. But is this good enough? For me, confirming that hope means evaluating beyond exit to ex-post, at least 2 years after donor investments end. 99% of the time, donors & development practitioners don’t return to see what lasted, what didn’t, why nor what emerged from people’s own effort. Yet we implement similar programs over and over onward, not learning lessons from the past. Sigh.
We need to evaluate what we expected to remain from our implemented projects. We also need to learn from what evaluator Bob Williams calls, “the sustainability of the idea that underpinned the results (even if the results were no longer evident)”. This is often beneath what emerged: Our projects catalyzed the local’s desire to sustain activities: taking new ways, that are locally manageable (changing how the development idea is implemented onward) or even having entirely new initiatives emerge from the participant groupings — from their own priorities, not ours. (For more on emerging impacts: https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/themes/SEIE)
Evaluation leaders talk about power, they talk about the environment. After 7 years of researching and evaluating projects ex-post evaluations, I have found there are no brilliant 100% sustained + projects nor are there any 100% abjectly scorched earth ones either. Our results are middling at best. And therein lies the rub. Projects are what donors want to give. Sometimes that overlaps with what recipient countries want, sometimes not. Most of the time the resources to sustain our multimillion-dollar, -euro, -yen, etc., investments aren’t there. We can use incentives (e.g. food aid or cash) that can bolster short-term success while we spend, but once phased out, can lead to sustainability sharply falling off as early as 2 years after we exit. It’s because while ‘development’ is about ‘our’ spending on ‘our’ programs, about short-term success while we’re implementing, rather than our equal partners’ priorities and ability to sustain it. We misuse our power. We care about ourselves far more than the people we ostensibly went there to ‘save’.
And as esteemed evaluators Andy Rowe/ Michael Quinn Patton noted, given climate change we need to question even more assumptions about how sustained and resilient our programming can be, by evaluating the natural environment on which our programming relies pre, during & implementation, at exit and ex-post closure. (More on sustained environment: https://valuingvoices.com/sustaining-sustainable-development/)
It also means we need to talk to those to whom we will eventually hand over early on to make sure we’ve built-in resilience to the climatic, economic shocks we know of so far. I recommend my colleagues Holta Trandafili and Isabella Jean’s presentations on partnering we did a couple of months ago: https://valuingvoices.com/sustainability-ready-what-it-takes-to-support-measure-lasting-change-webinar/
Finally, I have come to see that to make sustainability more likely for years to come, we must fund, design, implement, and monitor/ evaluate For Sustainability throughout the project cycle. I have come to see that folks need guidance to help support their integration of sustainability throughout, including environment & resilience, benchmarks, and more. We can learn from what ex-posts teach. Join me please, to help craft more sustained development:
Upcoming Sustained Exit Webinar: 6 Nov 2020, 14:30–17 CEST, 8:30–11 EST
“Sustained Exit? Prove it or Improve it!” Interactive webinar discussion of ex-post sustainability evaluation lessons and how to integrate into ongoing #aid programs. On Zoom, participants get resources: checklists, slides, recording, Join us to #sustain #impacts! Register, sliding scale: https://sustainedexit.eventbrite.com
by Jindra Cekan | Jul 7, 2020 | Accountability, ex-post evaluation, International aid, Participation, post-project evaluation, Sustainable development
On June 24th under GLocal’s UNConference, “Co-creating our future stories of hope and action”, Jindra Cekan, Holta Trandafili, and Isabella Jean presented their work on sustainability evaluations and exit strategies via local voices. We chaired a 2-hour discussion session on the following topics:
- Sustainability of global development projects and exit from them,
- The importance of valuing local partners’ and participants’ voices,
- How to embed ex-post evaluation of sustainability into the project cycle,
- How expectations, benchmarking, and early joint planning in exit strategies, as well as considering long-term ownership & relevance will support projects to be sustained locally, including questioning who will maintain results,
- Considering power dynamics between donors and ultimate ‘beneficiaries’ and
the value of the impact of the project from a variety of perspectives, and more
Here is the recording of our presentation or see just the PowerPoint presentation. We harvested lessons from our three presentations:
Jindra Cekan:
· Fear of learning about failure in our global development industry – INGOs are “waiting for a successful enough project” to commission ex-post project sustainability evaluation
· It needs to be a culture of learning, not a culture of success.
· Lack of transparency in sharing program evaluation results with communities and local government is widespread, and even more rarely do we come back after many years and share learnings
· Participatory approaches are vital, listening to participants about sustained impacts is key
· It is never attribution, always contribution. To isolate impacts, we need to look for project sites that haven’t had multiple other organizations overlapping through all phases.
· Building sustainability planning throughout the project cycle is key – but often doesn’t happen
Holta Trandafili:
· Sustainability needs to be planned to be researched, including evaluating why or why not were project elements sustained, and why? What has the project done to enable communities to sustain improvements?
· Expectations of sustainability need to be more modest (as most results are mixed good/bad)
· We need to ask: How are you defining and measuring sustainability – for how long should the results last? Among how many participants? Have you set benchmarks for success?
· We should expand your toolbox on methodology to investigate sustainability. Stories of success are one of a myriad of methods used, including mixed-methods, cost-benefit, etc.
· Start with the need for learning not [just] accountability
Isabella Jean:
· Sustainability investigation/evaluation/learning should be mindful that this is NOT about projects. It is about people.
· We have a system that focuses on gaps and needs to be filled vs. existing capacities’ structures to be reinforced. How can our work on measuring sustainability bring this to light and call it out, so that we change the norm?
· Planning for sustainability requires the insight to integrate resources and experiences of outsiders with the assets and capacities of insiders to develop context-appropriate strategies for change
If you would like to discuss this with any of us, please send us comments and we’re happy to respond. Thanks again to the G-Local UnConference team!
Below please find our bios:
Jindra Cekan/ova has worked in global development for 33 years focused on participatory design and M&E for global non-profits. She founded Valuing Voices 7 years ago. For details, see: Valuing Voices Founder
Holta Trandafili is the Research, Learning, and Analytics Manager with World Vision US and has been leading field research, monitoring, and evaluation since 2007. She has led sustainability measurement studies for World Vision programs in Uganda, Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, and Bolivia. Her areas of expertise and interest include program and community groups’ sustainability measurements; agency-level measurements; empowerment approaches to development; integrated programming; local capacities for peace; gender analysis; and outcome monitoring. Currently, Mrs. Trandafili serves as an Advisory Committee member for InterAction’s Effectiveness and Program Evaluation Working Group and chairs one of the sub-working groups under The Movement for Community-led Development.
Isabella Jean supports international and local organizations and funders to document promising practices, facilitate learning and strengthen capacities for conflict sensitivity, peacebuilding and humanitarian effectiveness. She has facilitated action research, collaborative learning and advisory engagements in over 25 countries, and serves as an advisor to policymakers, senior leadership and program teams. Isabella co-authored the book, Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of Aid and developed practical guidance to support accountability to communities, listening and feedback loops, and responsible INGO exits. She teaches graduate-level courses on aid effectiveness, program strategies and M&E of peacebuilding at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Previously, Isabella directed training at a community organizing network and conducted policy research for the Institute for Responsive Education, UNDP, and Coexistence International.
