home > conference - November 24-25, 2003

Enterprise Development Impact Assessment Information Service (EDIAIS)

NEW DIRECTIONS IN IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR DEVELOPMENT: METHODS AND PRACTICE

Simon Starling, Learning & Impact Assessment Officer, Save the Children UK

Assessing the impact of NGOs work: lessons learned from SC UK's experience

Link to View Power Point presentation

ABSTRACT

Over the last few years there has been an increasing investment among international development agencies in organisational performance systems and attempts to evaluate the impact of their work. Over the last two years, Save the Children UK has been developing a framework for impact assessment known as Global Impact Monitoring (GIM). GIM aims to support institutional learning by creating spaces for analysis and learning at country, regional and global levels, and ensuring this is fed into management processes as well as policy and advocacy development. The key principles of GIM are: a focus on impact and on the key processes leading to change, a comparable but flexible framework for analysis based on child rights approaches, and an inclusive process involving both external and internal stakeholders at all levels.

This presentation will include the lessons learnt from SC UK's experience of operationalising the GIM framework and examine some of the theoretical (appropriate timeframes for impact assessment; selection of examples; aggregation; consistency) as well as practical (creating spaces for learning; relationship issues; resources; quality of data) issues highlighted. It will also examine some of the trade-offs with regard to traditional reporting procedures and some of the emerging implications for the sector arising from such an approach.

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