Performance measurement and management – future critical tools for social and impact investors

Performance measurement and management practices – monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment – play an invaluable role in providing insights into becoming more effective. Lessons from past evaluation studies have shaped our current approach to development. The field of performance management continues to evolve in response to key pressures, reflecting and influencing trends in development thinking. While the tools for performance management and the approaches …

Determining impact and return on investment: Searching for a holy grail?

Assessing the impact of sustainable development programmes, especially ongoing performance measurement and management, has gained momentum in recent years. The interest and growth in numerous approaches, technologies, processes and systems that aim to understand the difference a development intervention can make can be attributed to impact investors’ and other stakeholders’ expectations. But determining impact and return on investment can at …

What is wrong with current monitoring and evaluation practices?

Questions about whether development programmes “work” have preoccupied the development sector for a long time. In today’s reality of continued economic hardship, coupled by diminishing resources and mounting sector scepticism, development practitioners face even more pressure to demonstrate the results, change and impact of their activities. Management consulting in this field therefore has to include monitoring and evaluation. Measurement practices …

Towards better monitoring and evaluation practice in performance measurement

Performance measurement is at the heart of all efforts by social investors and grantmakers to make social/community investment and development more effective. Philanthropists, donors, social and impact investors, governments and development agencies alike need more credible and timely evidence about their performance. While acknowledging that financial resources alone cannot drive sustainable development, the industry must strive to better understand how different types of development and …