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Evaluating Donor-Level Results Measurement Systems

EPAR TECHNICAL REPORT #300

Fri, 08/21/2015

AUTHORS: Pierre Biscaye, Melissa LaFayette, Andrew Martin, Monica Richardson, Zoë True, C. Leigh Anderson

ABSTRACT: 

This report reviews approaches to results measurement used by multilateral and bilateral donor organizations and highlights trends and gaps in how donors measure and report on their performance. Our review consists of assessing donor organizations in terms of their institutional design and levels of evaluation for results measurement, their organizational processes for measuring types of results including coordination and alignment with recipients, outputs and implementation, outcomes and impacts, and costs and effectiveness, and their processes for reporting and using results information. We collect evidence on 12 bilateral organizations and 10 multilateral organizations. The evidence review includes multi-country reviews of aid effectiveness, peer reviews by other donor organizations, donor evaluation plans and frameworks, and donor results and reporting documents. The report is based on an accompanying spreadsheet that contains the coded information from the 22 donor organizations. We find that donors report several types of results, but that there are challenges to measuring certain results at the aggregate donor level, due to challenges with funding and coordination for results measurement at the project, country, portfolio, and donor levels. Approaches to results measurement vary across donor organizations. We identify some trends and differences among groups of donors, notably between bilateral and multilateral donors, but overall there are no clear delineations in how donors approach results measurement. 

See also EPAR Technical Report #299: Evaluating Country-Level Government M&E Systems.

Check out our series of posts on donor-level results measurement on the Development Gateway blog:

TYPE OF RESEARCH: Literature Review

RESEARCH TOPIC CATEGORY: Development Finance & Policy; Aid & Other Development Finance; Monitoring & Evaluation

POPULATION(S): Countries/Governments

GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS: Global

Downloadable Documents

Full Report

Results Coding Spreadsheet