Step 2: Selecting an M&E Team

Rationale

You will need to have a core group of people who are responsible for creating and implementing the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of your program. A team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives will help you to better understand and measure the impact of your work. There should be 3-4 people who form the M&E team, and there should be other key stakeholders who participate when possible and necessary.

Task 1: Choose an M&E team leader

Someone needs to lead the monitoring and evaluation process. Ideally, this person should have the following characteristics:

• vision for what M&E can do for the program process;
• a deep understanding of the program;
• some authority to really get the M&E done;
• a good working relationship with program staff.

Task 2: Decide which stakeholders you want to invite to participate and when

Stakeholders have a strong interest in, or commitment to, your program and/or in the issue you seek to impact. For example, program staff, donors, clients, and community leaders. Stakeholders are people you need to hear from in your M&E process; some should be part of your M&E team, and others you will just need to hear from at certain points in the M&E process. However, it will probably not be feasible to have all stakeholders participate in your M&E process.

Stakeholders should have at least one of the following characteristics:
-deep knowledge of the problem being addressed by the program
-thorough understanding of intended impact of program
-deep knowledge of the actual implementation of the program

For your M&E team, consider people who have the following characteristics:

• Someone who is able and willing to oversee the M&E process from start to finish (the team leader)
• People who have a deep knowledge of the program objectives, activities, and the way it is actually implemented. Include staff who deliver the program as well as people who participate in the program. Some people such as key program staff and participants should always be a core part of the M&E team, and others should be included as needed and is feasible.
• Decision-makers in your organization, whose participation can legitimize the M&E process and provide additional resources. If possible, the agency’s director should participate to some degree. She or he may not be able to participate in all M&E Team meetings, but should consider herself or himself a member and be present at key meetings if possible.
  Tips: Why Involve Staff with Authority?
• Someone who understands the implications of a rights-based social justice perspective for programming and evaluation.
• Someone with at least some knowledge of monitoring and evaluation and/or conducting research. If no one in the previous categories has such expertise, Tips: Where Can You Find Someone with Monitoring and Evaluation Knowledge? But even if you can’t find anyone, don’t worry! This Toolkit will walk you through each step of the M&E process and recommend references you can learn more from whenever needed.

When and How to Involve Stakeholders who are not part of the M&E team?

• Decide which stakeholders you would like to have as occasional participants, and at which point in the process you would like to include them.
• Explain the M&E process you are undertaking and how their participation fits into that process.
• Be very clear about what their involvement means such as: how many meetings, the preparation you will ask them to do, the opinions/recommendations you will request, importance of maintaining confidentiality, etc.
• Establish whether or not they will receive payment for their time, travel, and incidentals, particularly if they are traveling from a distance and/or having to stay overnight.
• Establish final decision making authority. If it rests with the M&E Team, then make this clear; but also indicate that their advice will be taken into consideration and greatly appreciated

Involvement of stakeholders who are not staff in your organization can:

-Help you maintain a partnership with the community and people that you are trying to work with
-Contribute to making your program, and evaluation, accountable to the people you most want to serve
-Give those involved a voice and role in the program process
-Ensure that you understand and take into account diverse perspectives on the program and its goals
-Increase community engagement
-Give you insight into how to talk about highly intimate issues with clients
-Ensure awareness of local, cultural, class, and gender norms to facilitate a sensible plan of action
-Help to leverage additional resources and build coalitions
-Build skills among stakeholders that enable them to influence how your program evolves
-Build common language for talking and thinking about program goals and activities

Tips: Benefits of Involving Stakeholders throughout the M&E Process

Keeping it real:

• You need to be sensitive to whom you invite to participate, and whom you do not. People may be insulted that they have not been included, or they may feel it is a burden and feel uncomfortable saying no.
• Inviting people to participate may be taken as an implicit agreement that you will be able to respond to and incorporate their suggestions in your program planning, monitoring and evaluation process. Truly including people and listening to them requires an investment. Inviting people to participate and then not taking their thoughts into account can be much more damaging than not including them at all. In addition, it is not always feasible, nor does it always make sense, to invite all of your M&E stakeholders for every meeting. Use their, and your, time wisely by focusing what you ask of them for key moments in your program process.
• Organizations who have a similar mission may be valuable stakeholder participants. However, inviting them to participate may be difficult as they are likely to be, in at least some ways, your competitors (competing for the same funds and support).

You may want to use the Stakeholder Selection Tool worksheet to help you generate a list of possible stakeholder participants for your M&E.

Tips: Benefits of Involving Stakeholders throughout the M&E Process

Tips: What Are the Costs of Stakeholder Meetings?

Worksheet: Stakeholder Selection Tool

Task 3: List your M&E team members

You may want to use the M&E team worksheet to help you generate your M&E team.

Worksheet: M&E Team Worksheet will help you select whom to include.

Task 4: Creating a learning perspective on your M&E team

• Make sure the agency’s director emphasizes TO ALL STAFF that he/she sees M&E as a very important activity of the agency. If the leadership supports the M&E process it will be easier for people to invest the needed time and to be honest about seeking real answers.
• Help the Team members express their concerns about the M&E process. Since M&E requires a willingness to really look at the impact you are having- and possibly constructively criticize the ways things are functioning- tensions and even power struggles can arise. Help your Team members voice their concerns. Address their concerns as a group and come to an understanding about how you will manage the potentially uncomfortable aspects of the process.
• Clarify that the results will not be used against people. Create a safe environment by ensuring that evaluation results will not be used as performance measures or to penalize staff in any way.
• Emphasize that findings from M&E will be used to improve the program, and can help attract additional funding.
• Discuss what might happen if you find that the program does not have the impact you had hoped for.