Methods and Tools

This toolkit deals with the “nuts and bolts” (the basics) of setting up and using a monitoring and evaluation system for a project or an organisation.  It clarifies what monitoring and evaluation are, how you plan to do them, how you design a system that helps you monitor and an evaluation process that brings it all together usefully.  It looks at how you collect the information you need and then how you save yourself from drowning in data by analysing the information in a relatively straightforward way.  Finally it raises, and attempts to address, some of the issues to do with taking action on the basis of what you have learned. Developed by CIVICUS this is a really useful guide. Go to: http://www.civicus.org/new/media/Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation.pdf

Published by Working Together Project

Most people involved in running a group, and certainly all of those who have applied for a grant, will have heard the phrase 'monitoring and evaluation'. It isn't always clear, though, exactly what it means. Seen on an application form, or when compiling a report on how money has been spent, it can sometimes seem like a bureaucratic hoop that you need to go through.

Used properly, though, monitoring and evaluation can be a very useful tool and, stripped of the jargon, it isn't too complicated:

• Monitoring is collecting and recording information about what your group is doing
• Evaluating is using the information you have collected, together with other information and your overall experience, to get a good clear picture of your group and its work.

Looked at like this almost every group does monitor and evaluate what they do, if only informally: counting how many people turn up at a meeting is monitoring, and chatting about how an event went for a few minutes at the end is evaluation.

The Resource Centre information sheet on Monitoring and Evaluation aims to help when you need to do something more systematic than that. It aims to help you think about your work and its effects more clearly, and to do so in a more formal way that lets you demonstrate to the outside world, such as funders, that what you are doing is useful. It looks at

• Why you should monitor and evaluate your work
• How you should go about planning your monitoring and evaluation
• Some techniques for monitoring
• Some things to think about when evaluating

We also give a couple of case studies, which will hopefully make some of the issues clearer. This information sheet is intended as a simple introduction. Monitoring and evaluation, especially for larger groups, can become quite complicated and so we also give some other sources of information which you might find useful.

Published by Brighton Resource Centre

http://www.acevo.org.uk/index.cfm/display_page/Sucessful_Procurement2

Published by Working Together Project

This guide introduces some of the core debates and considerations for development practitioners involved in designing and managing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities. It provides case studies of applying different methodological approaches, tools for step by step planning and lessons learned from international experience of M&E in a range of developing country contexts.

 http://www.gsdrc.org/go/topic-guides/monitoring-and-evaluation

Published by Working Together Project

Children Participating in Research, Monitoring And Evaluation Ethics and Your Responsibilities as a Manager

http://www.unicef.org/evaluation/files/TechNote1_Ethics.pdf

Published by Working Together Project