Great post. It’s somewhat ironic how spotty the internal M&E is for most EA orgs, given how much we demand from the orgs we recommend.
An addition: you mention reaching out to IDInsight and IPA for paid M&E services, but they operate at a scale and budget that is way beyond most organisations. Individual, freelance M&E consultants are much more likely to be able to design a framework, help you collect data and then evaluate the findings, for a cost appropriate to your org size.
This is what my wife does for a living and she could try to recommend colleagues if orgs were looking for some freelance help (for clarity, she doesn’t do this for EA orgs and isn’t touting for business).
Yes agree! I think the broader international development world where I have worked has a lot more freelance consultants who provide these services and it would be great to see more consultants come into the EA space. We also know though that cost can sometimes be a barrier so we are also trying to offer some kind of probono support and the MEL community to help people get started.
Great post. It’s somewhat ironic how spotty the internal M&E is for most EA orgs, given how much we demand from the orgs we recommend.
An addition: you mention reaching out to IDInsight and IPA for paid M&E services, but they operate at a scale and budget that is way beyond most organisations. Individual, freelance M&E consultants are much more likely to be able to design a framework, help you collect data and then evaluate the findings, for a cost appropriate to your org size.
This is what my wife does for a living and she could try to recommend colleagues if orgs were looking for some freelance help (for clarity, she doesn’t do this for EA orgs and isn’t touting for business).
Yes agree! I think the broader international development world where I have worked has a lot more freelance consultants who provide these services and it would be great to see more consultants come into the EA space. We also know though that cost can sometimes be a barrier so we are also trying to offer some kind of probono support and the MEL community to help people get started.