What you can commission · 02 of 04

Research, MEL & Decision Evidence

Monitoring, evaluation and learning designed backwards from the decisions it is meant to inform — not forwards from what is easy to count.

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What it is

Research and MEL that exists to inform a decision, and is designed from that decision backwards. Evaluations, baselines, MEL frameworks, indicator sets, primary research, and the analysis that turns any of it into something a board can act on.

The distinction that matters: most MEL is designed forwards, from what is measurable, and hopes to be useful. This is designed backwards, from what has to be decided, and discards anything that does not serve it.

Duration
6–20 weeks
Starts from
A decision you need to take, and a date
Who it is for
Programme funders and implementers who need evidence that will stand up to a board, a funder or an evaluator
Delivered by
Whitney van Schyndel, with field researchers and analysts sized to the study

When you need it

  • You genuinely lack evidence, and the gap is blocking a decision.
  • A funder requires independent evaluation.
  • Your indicator set has grown by accretion and nobody has asked in years what it is for.
  • You are collecting a great deal and using very little.
  • Evidence arrives after the decisions it was meant to inform.

That last one is worth a moment. If your evidence is good but late, the problem is cadence rather than method, and it is usually cheaper to fix.

What is in scope

  • Evaluation — formative, summative, developmental. Mixed methods where the question warrants it.
  • MEL framework design — indicator sets mapped to decisions, with an explicit retirement list for what you can stop collecting.
  • Baselines and endlines, including the sampling and instrument work underneath.
  • Primary research — qualitative and quantitative, including with participants rather than only about them.
  • Analysis and synthesis, including across programmes where learning has not been travelling.
  • Reporting that separates realised from modelled and says which is which.

How it runs

Six to twenty weeks depending on scope and primary data collection. Every engagement opens by naming the decision, the owner and the date the evidence is needed. If those three cannot be named, we will say so, because the finding is usually more valuable than the study.

What you receive

  1. The study itself — evaluation, baseline, or primary research as scoped
  2. A MEL framework with every indicator mapped to a named decision
  3. An explicit retirement list: what you can stop collecting, and why
  4. Instruments, sampling notes and the analysis code or workbook
  5. A findings report that labels realised and modelled separately
  6. A one-page decision brief written for the forum that will act on it

What we need from you

  • The decision, the owner and the date. If those three cannot be named we will say so before you spend anything.
  • Access to existing data, however messy — we would rather work with what exists than duplicate it.
  • Introductions to participants or partners where primary research is in scope, plus any ethics approvals.
  • An internal counterpart who can answer questions inside a day, not a fortnight.

Where this has been done

CFYE is the reference: a live, funding-linked delivery environment across 11 countries where impact data already drives funding decisions in real time. See the case studies.

The honest limit

This is the service most often bought when a different one was needed. If your last three evaluations reached broadly similar conclusions and nothing changed, a fourth will not either — that is an operating problem and it is answered by operating design. We will tell you if we think that is what you are looking at, including when it costs us the brief.

Questions we get asked

Can you work with the data we already have?

Usually, and it is normally the first thing we look at. A significant share of engagements find the organisation already holds enough evidence to answer the question and has never synthesised it across programmes. That is a cheaper and faster finding than a new study, and we would rather deliver it than sell one.

Do you do independent evaluation for funders?

Yes. Where independence is the point, we scope it explicitly — who commissions, who has sight of drafts, and what happens if the findings are unwelcome. Those terms are agreed before the work starts rather than negotiated once the results are in.

How do you handle findings that are uncomfortable?

We report them, and we label confidence honestly. Our standing practice is to separate what has been realised from what has been modelled and never to add them together. A range with visible assumptions survives a finance director's questions; a single confident number does not.

How to start

  1. Send the questionThe decision you need to inform, and when. That is enough to start.
  2. A 45-minute scoping callWe check whether the evidence already exists somewhere in your organisation before proposing to generate more.
  3. A written scope and feeMethod, sample, timeline, and what the findings will and will not be able to support.

The other three

All four run on the same underlying architecture — the Integrated Impact Operating Model, which we designed and published.