India  

Impact means different things to different people. Donors, governments, non-profits, and communities often have different views on how to define the impact of a development intervention. A development intervention has different impacts on collaborating stakeholders, even if those are not tracked or measured. Most efforts at measuring impacts tend to ‘blur’ it with project evaluation. There is an emerging concurrence that the impact measurement is different from the evaluation.

Over the years, Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) with unflinching support from the official donor agencies has become the dominant tool for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of development interventions. LFA is often critiqued for its straight-jacketed approach to M&E of development interventions by defining Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes in a linear way across the result chain. In most cases, the primary focus of the evaluation has been to find out how effectively and efficiently a project has achieved the intended outcomes during its life span. On the other hand, impact measurement focusses on the long-term effects of these outcomes and tries to explain “so what” questions, ideally much after the completion of the project. Apart from the intended impacts, there are unintended impacts, which can only be assessed after the end of the project cycle.

Though the rationale for investing in impact measurement is common sense, very little investment is being made in measuring it systematically. Measuring impacts of how development interventions have changed the lives of people in the community helps to provide political and resource support from stakeholders. The findings of impact measurement can help to learn from and advocate for changes in attitude, behaviour, policies and legislations, and even scale up in the future.
 
Of late, the non-profits are experiencing accelerated demands for measuring impacts from the donor agencies, particularly from the private philanthropies and CSR programmes in a disproportionate intensity. On many occasions, these demands have reached such ridiculous situations where even a short-term intervention (one year or two years) with skimpy resource allocation asks for demonstrating impact. Is this a new faddism? Many non-profit leaders often complain that when short-termism, the tangibility of outputs, and scant resource allocation are the rules of the game, articulating and demonstrating the impact is absurd, and rather not be undertaken.
 
PRIA’s experience of monitoring, evaluation and impact measurement over these four decades has highlighted the value of synergising participatory learning processes with assessment of pre-established benchmarks. Measuring progress, of any change project cannot be limited to requirements of reporting to far-away donors in a language and manner that is acceptable to them. Assessment of changes, both anticipated and unanticipated, has to serve multiple purposes for different stakeholders.
 
As we enter a period of disruptive changes in societies around the world (both the pandemic and climate impacts demonstrate that adequately), all development interventions will face complexity and uncertainty. Measuring results and impacts becomes increasingly critical for adapting to changing realities as any planned development project unfolds. In such a context, investing in measuring impacts on communities and institutions (working with them) becomes even more urgent to better design and implement future projects.

Yet, recent efforts, howsoever small and few, have tended to invite ‘external (sometimes global) experts’ for expensive impact measurements. These tools and methodologies tend to be applied universally, as if context does not matter. Expertise-driven impact measurements do not build local capacities (let alone ownership) for assessing impacts as an ongoing part of any change process in societies and institutions.

It is in this perspective that a conversation about issues related to prevailing and best practices and prospects of Impact Measurement is being convened by PRIA in partnership with Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), India.
 
As Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) approaches its 40^th Anniversary in February 2022, we are co- convening a Virtual Samvad – Conversation on Making A Difference: Adapting Impact Measurement on 23 November 2021 (Tuesday) from 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm (Indian Time).
 
The Samvad – Conversation will explore the following key questions:

• What approaches, methods and tools can be adapted to measure impact? What lessons can be drawn from the international experiences?
• What capacity building strategies and interventions can enable scaling up impact measurement practices?
• What are the ways in which impact evaluation can be made independent and free from biases?

 
Please REGISTER for the event. On registering, we will send a Zoom link via email (at the email address provided in the registration form), which will give you access to the event.

Panelists:

• Dr Edward (Ted) Jackson, Senior Research Fellow, Carleton University, Canada
• Ms Naghma Mulla, CEO, EdelGive Foundation, India
• Dr Simi Mehta, CEO & Editorial Director, IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, India
• Ms Nancy MacPherson, Acting Head of Impact, Mastercard Foundation, Canada
• Mr Jignesh Thakkar, Associate Director, Sustainability & CSR Advisory, KPMG India
• Dr Dipendra K C, Assistant Dean, Academic Affairs, Thammasat University, Thailand
• Dr Yogesh Kumar, Executive Director, Samarthan, India