Berlin - On 2 December, Dr. John Marsh, Executive Director of Prosperity Initiative, was invited to speak at the second workshop on Impact of Monitoring and Evaluation Efforts on Design, Implementation & Resource Allocation, organised by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ).

The meeting covered various approaches to how agencies ensure measurement, including monitoring and evaluation (M&E), improves decisions in project design and resource allocation. One major issue was how to aggregate results at an agency level to demonstrate overall performance. The meeting brought together M&E and agency leaders from foundations, bilateral donors and agencies, corporations, multilateral organisations and academia to create a community of learning.

The conference originated from an early 2008 request by foundations to the leading traditional agencies (IFC and GTZ) to address whether programs supported by ‘philanthropic' dollars are working and what the appropriate methods to monitor and evaluate (M&E) the development effectiveness of these interventions would be. While M&E is generally accepted as a necessary tool for evidence-based decision-making in development, it is not well established in practice. M&E efforts often occur in isolation, thus limiting the potential to create industry-wide standards, greater accountability and the transparency necessary to improve aid outcomes.

The December conference was a follow up to a seminar in May 2008 hosted by IFC and GMF on measuring results in private sector development projects for representatives of foundations and multilateral donor organisations.

Marsh was invited through his and Prosperity Initiative's association with IFC's Results Measurement for Advisory Services Unit in Washington DC. Through Prosperity Initiative's long association with IFC-MPDF in the Bamboo sector in Viet Nam, the bamboo case study has been presented in various venues where IFC is demonstrating the success of its work - in particular, Prosperity Initiative's approach to measuring outcome level impacts such as people moving over the poverty line in an entire market system.

"For Prosperity Initiative, it was a good opportunity to get feedback about our approach to measuring results from such an important forum," Marsh said. "We learnt from what others are doing in comparison to our own work, notably the importance of measuring indicators and outcomes which can be aggregated at a corporate level."

"It was also interesting to learn first hand that most agencies continue to struggle with the practical issue of how to process the evidence and learning from study, baseline, interim and end survey stages into effective strategic decisions about projects and development spending," Marsh explained. "All donors want approaches to help guarantee their development spending will bring the results they are looking for."

The forum was a productive mix of perspectives and views and created an impetus for future collaboration between private and official donors on this matter of evidence-based approaches to development.