Monitoring and Impact evaluation is not easy but this is KEY to any business and development programme to show what they want to achieve and how they are achieving it.
In this context, ISEAL Alliance through its Impact code tries to give orientation to sustainable standard setting organisations on how a M&E system should look like to measure expected sustainability issues – Learn more here.
As well, the DCED – the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development – developed a Standard that look into how enterprises can measure their results. This Standard is based on 8 points as follow:
1) Articulating the Results Chain
2) Defining Indicators of Change
3) Measuring Changes in Indicators
4) Estimating Attributable Changes
5) Capturing Wider Change in the System or Market
6) Tracking Programme Costs
7) Reporting Results
8) Managing the System for Results Measurement
Find out more about DCED Standard and case studies here.
The Huffington Post published an article giving “10 reasons Fair-trade coffee doesn’t work” in July 2014 – Read more here.
On a personal note, I am very happy to see that people are more and more interested in impact measurement. This is where we need to work in order to demonstrate our commitments and positive results of good practices. Impact measurement goes beyond performance indicators. It looks at what we want to achieve, which indicators we should use and the actual change that occurs.
Then comes the question of attribution, who is responsible for the measured change. This is a difficult question but ideally we need to strive to estimate the attribution or at least to position ourselves saying that this is happening and we might be one of the factors of the measured change.
But be aware that Monitoring and Evaluation is key to demonstrate real impacts and commitments. People, organisations involved in sustainable standards and practices need to start somewhere. Some aspects can be criticised but finding relevant, good indicators to measure REAL changes in a long-term is not an easy task.
I am happy to discuss this further, do not hesitate to contact me.