It is very important to plan the monitoring & reporting of the programme as well as the evaluation of the programme. In practice, these terms are often used to name the same thing, but for donors and stakeholders there is a vital difference.

Monitoring: is the ongoing collection and analysis of programme information by the programme manager. The aim is to check whether the planned inputs are used, the planned activities are completed and whether the planned outputs are delivered. The focus is on the “programme” itself.

Evaluation: is a separate survey, collecting programme and outside information from programme insiders, stakeholders, beneficiaries and outside experts. The aim is to check whether the programme has contributed to the overall goal and purpose. The key focus is on longer term impact and it happens mostly after the end of the programme.

The centerpiece for monitoring and evaluation are “Indicators”. An indicator is a figure that can be measured. It indicates the performance level necessary to achieve an objective. If the indicator achieves a certain target, this means that we have met our objective. Indicators have to be defined in terms of Quality, Quantity and Time (Objectively Verifiable Indicators). For example if the objective is to reduce poverty of a community by 30 %, then one indicator will be the houshold income. The indicator will be expressed as baseline (before start of programme): 20 % of housholds have an income higher than 50 $ and target (after the programme): 40 % of housholds have an income higher than 50 $ per month.

Your institution will have to define the indicators and make them objectively verifiable as baselines and targets. As a next step, you will have to define the information that you needs to collect per programme in order to calculate the indicators' baselines and targets.. The programme management will develop the plan for how to collect the information. Typical means are programme documentation analysis, client questionnaires, feed-back from sales people or client presentations, budget and cash-flow analysis, phone surveys, analysis of existing statistical data.

Make sure that the right information is available for all before/after comparisons. For example, you may want to measure the success of your awareness workshops. You need to collect information about the state of awareness “today” before starting your workshops. After having implemented all workshops you will collect the state of awareness again and then compare it to the former one.