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Step 3: Presenting Findings - External Audiences

Rationale

Use your findings to change the world! Share your M&E findings with external audiences beyond your own program, donors, and stakeholders, in ways that will help advance your program’s agenda.

=> Use your findings to advocate with key target audiences.

• Identify those you want to influence such as government officials and policymakers, the press; community leaders. Are there policymakers who have recently made pronouncements that suggest they may be interested in the kind of work your program is doing? How can you cultivate interest in your work among people you want to be interested and who you want to influence?
• Approach legislators and other public decision-makers
  • Brief any important political figures before you release your report to the public. This is especially important if your evaluation findings make it clear that there will be a need for policy changes
  • Policymakers or agency officials may wish to make a public response to your findings as well. For example, if your evaluation shows that your peer outreach HIV prevention program with street children is highly effective but under-funded, area service agencies may wish to let people know that they plan to increase funding for the project in the next budget year
• Approach the media and journalists
  • By informing the media you will be engaging them to make your case more widely
  • You need to provide a “hook” so journalists will see the importance of your findings. A “hook” is a story, a current event, a topic under investigation, an issue that people are concerned about
  • Present the findings in clear simple ways; don’t lose time describing the details of the M&E methodology. Give journalists the human face and meaning of the findings
  • Present the findings at public events such as press conferences or releases, and academic or political conferences
  • If you have produced a published report or video about the program hold a public event to present it to the media and local politicians
  • If the program is opening a new office, or expanding to a new location, or if you are starting a new campaign, present the evaluation findings at the “launch” of this new work
  • Always provide the key findings in written handouts so the journalists can take the information away with them
  • Try to include testimonies and stories; if possible and appropriate have beneficiaries present their own stories at any public event you are holding
  • Write “letters to the editor” whenever an issue arises that your program and findings relate to. Provide a key finding or testimony that is relevant to the point you are making
• Link up with advocacy networks that promote the same issues that you are concerned with, such as gender equality and rights in the area of health. You may find that by partnering with other like-minded programs you can construct a stronger case based on aggregate findings

=> Use your findings to inform the community at large about your program

• Include key findings and testimonials in your marketing materials
• Hold public meetings where you present your program and describe its advantages and positive results
• Call in to radio programs and provide findings and testimonials

=> Use your findings to build and strengthen the SRHR movement

You are not alone and your findings could be of great interest to other SRHR organizations. There are several reasons for trying to disseminate the results of your evaluation with other SRHR and colleague organizations:

• To share promising practices: There are likely many other organizations in your local area, state or country that are doing similar work and would stand to gain from your experiences in the field. You could hold inter-agency seminars or meetings at which groups can share findings and identify common lessons learned; you may even be able to refer to each others’ work in your reports. Sharing good practices helps improve programs throughout the field by introducing them to methods and insights that have been refined through experience. This helps to save time and resources that can be dedicated to innovating new approaches and ideas.
• To make a change in the attention paid to an issue: Dissemination activities increase awareness about what your results say about the community or target group. If the findings reveal that despite your interventions clients at a family planning clinic still feel like the health care providers are not sensitive to their needs, getting this information to the right ears will be critical to pushing the providers further in their sensitization.
• To foster collaborative relationships among local NGOs: Sharing information also creates an environment that encourages collective problem solving and longer term sustained change. Dissemination activities that bring an important issue to light can help revitalize or build a new network of groups committed to addressing the problem. Interested groups, even those who had never engaged with the issues that you are sharing, may see the connections with their own work, and new working groups can be formed across traditional lines of collaboration.
• To mobilize community support for effective interventions: Building a base of supporters for your work among colleagues will be very useful if and when it comes time to put pressure on policy-makers to advocate for change. Colleague organizations have their own membership bases to offer as a network to get the word out about what your results revealed and how they can help to affect the change you want to see.

=> use your findings to build the base of knowledge about SRHR issues

Far too often, SRHR programs carry out M&E and think the only use for their findings is local. You may also be concerned that your M&E was not rigorous enough to present outside of your local circle. We encourage you to think about reaching out even farther, and trying to present your findings at the national and international levels.

• Identify dissemination settings such as professional/academic conferences, workshops, and journals that focus on programs and evaluation of such programs.
• Invite colleagues who helped you with the M&E process from the local university or other agencies to join with you to present the findings in these settings.
• Link your findings to critical issues related to gender equity, sexual rights, women’s empowerment, human rights, etc., and try to present them in sessions where agreement will be found on these topics.
• Reach out to other programs similar to yours and relate your findings to theirs. Perhaps you can pool your results or present them together as a panel making a stronger case for the things you found.
• Focus on your most interesting findings and illustrate them with stories or testimonies.
• Be forthright about the methodological limitations of your work, but also proud of the findings you have obtained. All evaluations, even the best funded, have some limitations; and all findings are useful when put together with other findings on similar topics and experiences.
• Provide careful descriptions of your methodology, perhaps in a separate handout, so that colleagues can review it in detail.

Worksheet: Audience Information Needs (Word and PDF)

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