Grantmaking, NGO Interest

When M&E goes upside down

23 February 2010

Mokibelo Ntshabeleng wonders about the power dynamics and imbalances between the grantmakers and grantees that can result from an immature approach to monitoring and evaluation.

Written by Mokibelo Ntshabeleng, Tshikululu Social Investments’ Monitoring and Evaluation Manager.

I was invited to a conference last year to talk to the topic “œmonitoring and evaluation in the CSI context – whose voice matters the most, the measurer or the measured?”  This was an interesting subject to muse over as not only does the topic talk about the power dynamics and relations between grantmakers and grantees, but it also talks about the maturity of the practice of monitoring and evaluation as an industry in South Africa.

Whose voice counts the most, the measurer or the measured?

Historically, the voice that mattered most was the one that had financial power, without reading much into who was most affected by the evaluation results.  The measurer enjoyed more participation, while the measured would only be an informant.  I would like to think that, although the evaluators might have realised the detriment of such approaches to the M&E industry, they could not “œbite the hand that feeds them”.

Unfortunately, these approaches have indeed been detrimental to the practice of M&E.  Measurers have  not seen the value of evaluation and reports have ended up on the shelves, unread.  On the other hand, NGOs have been fearful of evaluation, suspecting it of being a policing tool that will result in funds being withdrawn from projects.

Monitoring and evaluation as a field has to work hard to restore trust in the eyes of both the measurer and the measured, and reclaim its value and its benefits to development projects and programmes.

Which practices in monitoring and evaluation perpetuate power dynamics in evaluation projects?

The monitoring and evaluation industry has left much of the responsibility for its role of evaluating projects to the measurer, forgetting the shortcomings that the measurer might have, particularly regarding the ethics and knowledge of the discipline.  The measurer saw it fit to dictate the methodological approaches and influenced evaluation results to report what they would like to see and hear about the project in question.

Evaluators also transformed their responsibility into a transactional one – that is, evaluation report over money – without paying much attention into the utility and ethical values of the evaluation results.  These dynamics perpetuated the ill-practice of monitoring and evaluation and the perceptions clouding it today.

Has monitoring and evaluation matured in South Africa, and what strides are indicative of that?

The growth of monitoring and evaluation as an industry in South Africa is gaining momentum, and this is due largely to the establishment of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association (SAMEA) in 2004, and the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation practice announced by the South African government in 2009.

In my opinion, this commitment by government is an acknowledgement of the significance of monitoring and evaluation in any matured institution.  However, the skills of evaluators and the ethics abiding the practice are still questionable to some extent.

The ethical challenges facing the industry relating to financial power struggles over ethics echo the immaturity and lack of knowledge surrounding the values that encompass the practice of monitoring and evaluation.  There is a significant role that SAMEA needs to play in capacitating the users of evaluation.

These include the measurer, the measured and the evaluator in reclaiming the value of evaluation for societal development.