Very well said—always appreciate your clarity of thought on things like this.
I’ve been surprised at how little rigour funders have asked for with monitoring. There’s definitely an extent to which it matters less for smaller orgs (the ToC funders are operating with is much more catalytic), but I was expecting to at least have to show someone around our systems a bit. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think about and reduce measurement biases, etc, because knowing my real impact matters a lot to me! I’m sure Evidence Action felt the same way and still failed, which is as good proof as any that these kinds of evaluations should be handled externally, by genuine critics, for anything serious. Incentive blindness is so real and so pervasive.
Very well said—always appreciate your clarity of thought on things like this.
I’ve been surprised at how little rigour funders have asked for with monitoring. There’s definitely an extent to which it matters less for smaller orgs (the ToC funders are operating with is much more catalytic), but I was expecting to at least have to show someone around our systems a bit. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think about and reduce measurement biases, etc, because knowing my real impact matters a lot to me! I’m sure Evidence Action felt the same way and still failed, which is as good proof as any that these kinds of evaluations should be handled externally, by genuine critics, for anything serious. Incentive blindness is so real and so pervasive.