News archive

INTRAC Monitoring and Evaluation conference

Bond members attended the INTRAC M&E conference in the Netherlands on 14-16 June. Christian Aid, CAFOD, Sightsavers, WaterAid and Care presented on the monitoring and evaluation of governance and accountability, the design of monitoring and evaluation systems, and testing theories of change. Rob Lloyd also attended and presented the Im-prove it! Framework at the conference. Download the presentation

An effectiveness self-assessment tool

Bond is working with consultants from Framework and a number of Bond members to develop a pilot effectiveness self-assessment tool. This will be completed by the end of April. Find out more about Framework in the interview we had with them at the beginning of the design process.

Self-assessment tool pilot process

Three member organisations, ActionAid UK, International Childcare Trust, and Self Help Africa, are currently piloting the tool to surface any major issues. We would like to invite your organisation to join with a wider group of members to participate in the second stage of the pilot from September-November. Your inputs will have a considerable influence over the final version of the tool. If you would like to be involved, please could you email the team by 22 June.

Bond approach to Value for Money

Bond organised a workshop on value for money in February and brought together Monitoring and evaluation and policy experts in May to work on a common definiton of value for money.

Building on these discussions, over the coming months we will be developing a sector framing paper on the issue of value for money and establishing a technical group for members that have piloted value for money analysis and want to learn and share from peers.

Impact Evaluation Workshop

Senior management and M&E, policy and advocacy staff from 40 Bond member organisations attended an impact evaluation workshop on 24-25 May. 3ie and Development Initiatives presented on theories, approaches, and methodologies of impact evaluation. Christian Aid, Oxfam and International HIV Aids Alliance also presented examples of impact evaluations. Download presentations from the two days from the menu below.

Introduction to impact evaluation - Howard White, Executive Director, 3ie

Impact evaluations by UK NGOs

Christian Aid - Daniel Jones, Head of Programme Innovation and Learning

International HIV Aids Alliance - Sam McPherson, Associate Director: Planning, Analysis and Learning

Oxfam - Karl Hughes, Global Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Advisor

University of Westminster - Dr. Andrew Hall, Reader in Public Health Nutrition

Monitoring and evaluation and inclusion

Bond supported a workshop organised by the Disability and Development Group on ensuring monitoring and evaluation takes into account equality and inclusion. Meeting attendees took the decision to write a paper on this to feed into the effectiveness framework.

Keystone partner survey

Powerful new data on the performance of international NGOs is provided in a ground-breaking report, launched on 12 January by Keystone in association with Bond. Twenty-five Bond members, some of whom had already participated in the survey, met on 18 March to share experiences and to learn more about the new tool that allows NGOs to monitor and manage their approach to partnership. Those who had already used the tool with their partners debated the usefulness of the opportunity to be measured against other members participating in the survey.

Evaluation standards

In October several members met to discuss the benefits and challenges of evaluation standards. Following this, organisations have agreed to conduct research into why evaluations sometimes fail to lead to organisational learning. Each organisation will trace the pathway of an evaluation from design, to implementation, through to formulating recommendations and dissemination so as to identify the common barriers to learning from evaluations.

Leaders Series

Directors and senior staff from member organisations attended a seminar on value for money on 12 January. Tim Boyes-Watson, Director of MANGO, and Stewart Wallis, Executive Director of the New Economics Foundation, exchanged thoughts on the meaning and the implications of the new value for money agenda for UK NGOs in international development.

Consultation with the membership

Fifty Bond members expressed their enthusiasm and support for the direction of our effectiveness programme at the most recent quarterly meeting at the end of January.

HIV/AIDS Alliance seminar

The seminar on 20 December, which was organised in association with the UK AIDS consortium, brought together UK NGOs to hear the Alliance share case studies on demonstrating value for money and perspectives from Dfid, the New Economics Foundation, and NICE International. Effectiveness Programme Manager, Rob Lloyd, presented an overview of what the sector is working on in terms of Value for Money analysis.

CONCORD CSO effectiveness

The meeting, from 24-25 November, was convened to produce a draft strategy for CONCORD’s advocacy engagement on CSO development effectiveness for the Busan High Level Forum. CONCORD is also intending to produce a 2-page advocacy paper on the enabling environment, to be released in January 2011.