Monitoring & Evaluation

As actors who play a major role in not only managing, but also raising, considerable amounts of aid resources, international NGOs have a responsibility to demonstrate that they are achieving results. The need to better measure what aid is (or isn’t) achieving has become a major focus for a wide range of development actors, both domestically and internationally, especially as foreign aid resources come under strain. 

InterAction’s Evaluation and Program Effectiveness Working Group (EPEWG) is dedicated to enhancing the capacity of our members to measure and demonstrate their effectiveness, and to informing donor policies and practices on monitoring and evaluation. The group also serves as a forum for InterAction members to exchange information on tools, good practices, and experiences in topics of interest.

Our current areas of focus include:

  • Impact Evaluation: The EPEWG seeks to build members’ impact evaluation capacity, as well as to influence approaches to impact evaluation. As part of this work, and with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, we have developed a series of guidance notes and webinars on impact evaluation.

  • Development of local monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity

  • Use of evaluation results, and emphasizing the use of evaluation for learning (and not just accountability)

  • Bottom-up approaches to evaluation

  • NGO Accountability: The EPEWG aims to both strengthen NGO accountability - particularly to local partners and those we serve - and to improve how NGO accountability is measured. 

The working group also closely follows the work of the U.S. government on monitoring and evaluation, particularly as this issue has gained greater prominence within agencies like USAID and the Department of State. 

The EPEWG is open to InterAction members only. Non-members are welcome to join our Evaluation Interest Group (EIG), which receives our monthly evaluation newsletter and is invited to participate in certain EPEWG events. To join either the EPEWG or EIG listserv, or for additional information on our work in this area, please contact Laia Grino.