Section 02: Purpose of MEL

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: "The purposes of MEL". Drawing of a big machine, almost like a steam-powered engine. A lot goes in as "Accountability to our donor or head office", and it moves through "project management", "performance", "learning". Then we have "meauring impact" which feeds into "resource allocation", "fund raising", and "providing evidence". Another element of the big machine is "accountability to our clients" which generates "Attribution" and "most significant change", both represented as clean-looking clouds.

2.: Defining the purpose of what we are doing MEL for

Before developing any MEL process or system we need to clarify the purpose; the following list highlights the most common reasons for undertaking MEL:

• Accountability (upwards to the donor or head office)

• Accountability (downwards to our clients)

• Control and supervision (of staff and volunteers) Learning from our work

• Improving our performance

• Project or programme management

• Providing evidence for advocacy

• Public relations and fundraising

• Resource allocation

• Measuring impact

In reality, most NGOs undertake monitoring and evaluation for many of the purposes listed above. How much emphasis is placed on each purpose will depend on many factors, such as the influence of different stakeholders, what the donor requires, the interests of individuals involved and what the NGO is trying to achieve. It will also be necessary to explore whether you have attributed to a change or contributed to that change to help decide what the purpose of your exercise will be.

2.2: Attribution and Contribution

Attribution refers to an accurate measurement of how much an organisation was fully responsible for the change process brought about because of their intervention.

e.g. The organisation was the only cause of the change brought about in the target population. An example of this would be if children’s hunger levels dropped because the project provided lunch time meals every day.

Contribution on the other hand is when a number of organisations or entities have all had some influence in bringing about change.

Many organisations will not have the capacity or resources to perform statistical studies or provide counterfactuals to identify their contribution. Therefore it may be better and more effective to provide a case study that shows a plausible link between their project and any changes that have occurred, exploring different stakeholders’ views of how the change came about.

These participatory methods tend to rely on qualitative data collection, such as interviews, focus-group discussions and observations. A note of caution however is that they are seen by some as less rigorous than other methods of assessing contribution, and may be particularly subject to bias. For example communities may tell an organisation what they think it wants to hear and may over-emphasise the role of an organisation in contributing to change (White and Phillips 2012).