Measurement, evaluation and learning

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“The great unexplored frontier
is evaluation under conditions of complexity.”

– Michael Quinn Patton

How do we know if what we are doing is working? Beautifully crafted strategies and deep investment in organizational development can point us in the right direction, but we must also commit to reviewing progress and learning from what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Measurement, evaluation and learning often are labeled as ‘nice-to-do’ rather than being viewed as critical activities to embed. In any type of work, however, growth and achievement rely on learning from past experience, being able to effectively communicate successes and understanding how to respond to challenges.

We support partners throughout all stages of their work to evaluate programs, co-design evaluation and learning frameworks and models and build organizational capability in this arena. These collaborations have contributed to our partners’ understanding of their own work and their confidence in telling stories of their impact and potential.

We bring a rigorous, independent perspective and employ a wide range of evaluation tools and methods. We believe that evaluation is a craft that is honed over time with careful attention to detail and best practices. We practice equitable evaluation and integrate it into every aspect of our work.

Let’s work together to deepen understanding of how and why your portfolio is or is not achieving its intended results.

Examples of questions we have addressed or are thinking about include:

What is the relevance of an organization’s investments to the broader field?
To what extent has a project been effective at achieving its objectives?
What are the major enablers or disablers of progress toward achievement of the objectives of a particular program?

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Thank you for leading an amazing meeting this morning! It was so valuable to have our stakeholders all together for this conversation and you all did a great job leading and facilitating an important conversation. Thanks again for working so closely with us, putting up with us, and providing an objective, credible and extremely useful set of findings and considerations for the road forward. We've so enjoyed working with you and look forward to sharing all the final products whenever you are ready.

- Mary Kay Gugerty
IPPHL Program Director

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Aline Impact were privileged to work with Global Impact Advisors in creating a theory of change and organisational results framework in collaboration with the staff of a global non-profit in the area of environmental sustainability. The specific indicators, their definitions and the appropriate data collection methods to ensure that these provided an organisational impact for the non-profit were areas that firmly contributed to the organisations advantage in a fast emerging market. Working with GIA was a very enjoyable, constructive, fruitful and professional experience and we look forward to more opportunities to work alongside them.

- Yvonne Pinto
Founder and CEO, Aline Impact

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We had the pleasure of working with Amy and her team at GIA and we couldn’t have chosen a better partner. GIA conducted a complex external evaluation of two functional aspects of our flagship Young Leaders Program. They delivered a series of useful recommendations that were adopted by Women Deliver, and that resulted in optimizing the effectiveness of our selection strategy and the efficiency of our operational processes. The whole team assigned was a pleasure to work with, delivered on time despite tight timelines, exhibited a strong capacity in unpacking complex processes, and a thorough understanding of the theory behind building the capacity of advocates.

- Gaby Jabbour
Senior Director, Program Quality & Compliance at Women Deliver

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GIA was an invaluable partner for our evaluation. They worked closely with us, getting to know our program and our needs. They provided an objective, credible and extremely useful set of findings and translated those into strategic considerations for future planning. They facilitated an extremely useful evaluation findings workshop with key stakeholders that allowed us to share the findings and involve key stakeholders in our strategic planning process.

- Mary Kay Gugerty
University of Washington

Examples of our work include:

Organizational effectiveness evaluations

GIA designed and led assessments of an organization’s overall portfolio of work in health and environmental sustainability. These assessments led to critical decisions about the client’s trajectory, including merging with other organizations and securing additional funding to continue to grow its capacity.