Delhi, 16/3/23: In 2022, Arthan conducted a landscaping study to understand India’s Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Ecosystem. The study yielded critical insights into the organizational development, talent management, and skills and capacity deficit in grassroots NGOs, especially in ensuring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and leveraging technology concerning accessing relevant data. To disseminate and discuss the study findings and exchange perspectives and deliberate solutions for and by the sector. Arthan is organizing a conference on March 23rd, 2023, on Building impactful and inclusive M&E organizations. The conference aims to bring together some of the key stakeholders from the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) ecosystem to deepen insights and formulate recommendations around the key areas of inquiry, i.e., prominent practices in the sector, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), capacity building and talent management needs within the M&E ecosystem.
Arthan will host two panels and an interactive workshop session as part of the convening.
Panel one will focus on ‘Building capacities in evaluation: Integrating grassroots organizations at every step.’ The speakers for the panel are Neeta Goel (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Gayatri Rao (IMAGO Global Grassroots), Megha Pradhan (CLEAR – JPAL South Asia), and Rahul Agrawal (Intellecap Advisory Services Pvt Ltd).
The second-panel discussion explores ways of ‘Building inclusive research organizations.’The speakers for the panel are Monica Jain (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation), Sabina Dewan (JustJobs Network), Aditi Vyas (International Centre for Research on Women), and Neeraj Trivedi (Pratham).
In addition to the panel discussions, a workshop will be organized on developing an Evaluation ecosystem platform- Co-creating the future of M&E: Intersection of technology, data, and capacity led by Tech4Good founders- Shemeer Babu and Arunabha Bhattacharya.
About the Study: The overarching goal was to investigate the existing M&E organizational practices and the limitations and challenges grassroots NGOs face.
The purposive and intentional research sample constituted 40+ participating organizations, evaluation and research experts, and job seekers. The findings focused on understanding the status of
- Organisational development and talent management in organizations working in the M&E ecosystem
- Skills and capacity development efforts for delivering M&E projects,
- Status of DEI integration in strategy and practices, and
- Accessing and integrating relevant data and technology.
The organizations were classified into four key archetypes:
- Consulting organizations,
- M&E organizations,
- Implementation organizations and
- Think Tank organizations.
The key findings are as follows:
- Large organizations (greater than 300 employees) have the required capacity to undertake in-house evaluations and demonstrate very low preference towards commissioning work to external organizations or consultants.
- Organisations with women in senior leadership roles positively influence the presence of female employees in the staff body.
- As much as 56% of organizations have reportedly embraced equity and diversity in their pursuit of developing M&E approaches, methodologies, and frameworks. M&E and think tank organizations should concentrate on effectively integrating DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) practices into their organizational processes. They should create affirmative policies and incorporate DEI practices prominently and lucidly within their organizational framework.
- Grassroots and implementation organizations must accord top priority to developing technical skills among their internal staff, as it is an indispensable requirement for recruiting and retaining top talent.
In particular, a key recommendation was to undertake capacity-building efforts using specialized training modules to build capacities of grassroots NGOs in Organisational Development, M&E, Marketing, and Strategy, Technology, Fundraising, and DEI.