Section 08: MEL of capacity strengthening

Monitoring capacity strengthening can be daunting, as it is not as tangible as other areas of work. The starting point is to have a capacity strengthening strategy and objectives which your Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) can focus on.

Capacity strengthening intends to trigger change in the partner and ultimately for the wider beneficiaries, but this is harder to control and measure, and extremely unlikely to happen in the short term anyway.

In practice, you should be monitoring the process of capacity strengthening and its outcomes (changes) in the supported partner. In some cases you may want to provide evidence of impact beyond this.

INTRAC's M&E Universe - a free online repository of short papers on various aspects of monitoring and evaluation - has resources on M&E of capacity strengthening: you can start with this paper.

8.1: A framework for MEL of capacity strengthening

What is being monitored or evaluated	Example	Example of questions to ask	Suggested methods
Impact	Changes in the community due to the better performance of the organisation	Numbers of participants, breakdown by gender/team etc +/- Reactions to the activity	Most significant change method
Longer term outcomes	More diverse & effective governance; greater involvement of members; new funders	Can the organisation carry out its work more effectively? What unintended consequences were there? What were the most significant changes?	Mixture of reports, surveys, interviews and discussion. Outcome harvesting. Most significant change method.
Short term outcomes	Changes in skills, knowledge, attitudes, relationships etc. New policies and procedures	What are you doing differently? How has your thinking changed? What has changed in your team or organisation?	Mostly use qualitative methods: interviews, observations. Can use a before/after knowledge test.
Outputs	Numbers of participants, breakdown by gender/team etc +/- Reactions to the activity	How many people participated? What was their feedback? Did any unplanned things happen?	Review records and reports at the time, interview or surveys of participants
CS activity	Numbers of participants, breakdown by gender/team etc +/- Reactions to the activity	How well was it done? Was it the right thing to do?	Review records and reports at the time, observe the activity

M&E Universe papers are available on the topics of Most significant change, surveys, Outcome harvesting and interviews.

8.2: Using the CS plan for MEL

Regular reviews of the capacity strengthening plan (see section 7 above) will help you monitor capacity strengthening with these questions:

1. Did we do what we said we would do?

2. How well did we do it?

3. Was the result what we hoped for?

4. Did anything unexpected change?

5. What do we need to do now and what needs to change in the plan?

6. What have we learnt?

Use the CS plan to review these questions every 3 months or so.

Be clear about what you need to do and what your partner needs to do and what you’ve each learned about supporting capacity strengthening.

If you have done an organisational assessment (see section 5), then it can be used as a baseline to measure progress by repeating the assessment in one or two years.

See also the INTRAC's M&E Universe papers on M&E of capacity strengthening