Step 1: Presenting Findings - Internal Audiences

Rationale

By presenting your findings to the people closest to your program you

--demonstrate the commitment you have to
--informing those who have helped you all along
--gain an excellent “proving ground” for presentations to outside audiences
afterwards

Task 1: Share the findings with your organization’s staff

=> Include staff from all parts of the organization, even those who may not have participated in the evaluation.

• Their insights will be helpful, and you want to encourage them to see how useful the evaluation process has been and will be on an on-going basis in the future

=> Hold an agency-wide staff meeting or circulate an agency-wide newsletter or bulletin with a summary of the findings.

• Present the findings in ways that will not be seen as critical to one department or group over another
• Highlight the successes and achievements
• Point out the limitations and failures in ways that point to lessons learned and future actions needed
• Invite input and discussion in ways that ensure people they are really being heard

=> Hold individual program or team meetings to discuss the findings in more depth with people directly involved in specific aspects of the program that your Team has been evaluating.

• Such feed-back sessions motivate staff and help them appreciate the great work they have been doing

Important: Far too often, reports are written and sent off to donors, and the people who actually did the great work never see them or even know how much they have accomplished.

Task 2: Share the findings with your organization’s stakeholders

Whether stakeholders have guided your process and supported your program from the beginning or their involvement is relatively recent, they should learn about the findings before other external audiences, for several reasons:

• They are likely to be invested and interested in your results, and therefore eager to hear them
• Making a thoughtful presentation and soliciting feedback and opinions will deepen stakeholders’ investment in your work and make them likely to continue supporting you in the future
• If the findings are not what you had hoped for, ask the stakeholders what factors they think inhibited the change you were hoping to achieve.
• If there is a potential for controversy around the results, stakeholders who are informed early can support you and advocate for your cause
• Stakeholders can help you formulate your arguments, plan dissemination (or even help disseminate), and think about next steps
• Stakeholders can become spokespersons for your program
• The Cairo Consensus challenges all programs to be more accountable to the communities in which they work. Reporting to your stakeholders first is an important component of the commitment to being accountable that your organization has made

Task 3: Share the findings with your current donors

Whether or not the donor actually paid for the M&E process, it is essential that you present the findings to all your current donors. Since continual feedback to your donors is a key for success, you should not hesitate to provide the findings to your donors even if a formal grant report is not yet due.

 

Remember your current donors may be some of your most enthusiastic cheerleaders; they have literally made an investment in your work.

 

=> If you are presenting an interim or final report, make sure you provide it in a timely manner so they can take advantage of it.

• Timely means presented in the timeframe the donor originally suggested and before that donor needs to make decisions about up-coming grants in the next funding cycle.

=> Use the format provided by the donor. However, if none was provided, we recommend you keep the report short, ideally 10-15 pages including:

• what you were expected to deliver
• what you achieved, including
  • collaborations created and strengthened or weakened
  • challenges you faced during implementation and how you addressed them
  • conclusions based on the findings
  • implications and/or recommendations for
    • your agency
    • the issue you are addressing, and
    • the larger field
  • your next steps based on your findings, including how you may make adjustments to your program (Step 2).

Important: Doing an excellent job of monitoring and evaluation does not guarantee that you will obtain continued funding. Donors change their priorities and also suffer changes in amounts of funds available. Having good evaluation data, however, will place you in a better position to make a case for continued support.

 

=> If you plan to ask the donor to continue or increase funding, clearly explain:

• What you imagine for the next phase(s) of the project
• Why has this donor’s support been particularly important
• Some donors will want to continue to fund current work, but others will likely be interested in taking the current work a step further.
  • Talk about where your new ideas fit in the context of the larger field and how you can contribute to the field by scaling up your current approach, trying new approaches or advocating to have your approach adopted more widely.
• Think about why a donor would be interested in furthering your goals and you in furthering theirs.
  • Be prepared to negotiate with the donor, as she or he may have ideas that she or he wants you to try, or program elements he or she would like you to incorporate. You also may have new ideas, backed up with evidence, which will impress the donor.
• You may want to use the findings to convince your donor to provide you with the funds for stronger evaluation, and possibly program replication, if the original findings were promising.

Important: Remember, your relationship with the donor is a partnership, and he or she has information needs that you can fulfill just as the donor fulfills your need for funding.