Context for This Guide
The best measurement approaches for direct service programs do not easily translate to systems change work. Thus, field catalysts require a learning orientation and new frameworks for effective measurement, evaluation, and learning (MEL).
What’s in This Guide?
- Building an Effective Theory of Change
- Determining What to Measure Using the "Dual Lens" Approach
- Communicating Progress and Impact to Funders
This guide is a resource for field catalysts (or organizations taking on field catalyst roles) to support MEL approaches that assess progress against organization- and field-level outcomes and that communicate their impact to funders.
Funders and field catalysts need signals of progress—and a shared language to talk about them—to indicate whether the system is moving in the desired ways. We frequently hear from funders and field catalysts alike that there are multiple challenges to capturing and communicating these signals, including:
- Unfamiliar measures of progress: Field catalysts often have signposts that indicate progress toward systems change, but they are not the measures that funders are familiar or comfortable with.
- Attribution versus contribution: It is difficult to attribute impact solely to specific activities—funders and field catalysts may need to recognize contribution to an outcome rather than full attribution.
- Field catalysts’ dual lens: Field catalysts focus both on ecosystems working to drive change and on systemic barriers and “leverage points”: places in the system where a small shift could lead to large changes.
Our hope is that field catalysts can use this guide to overcome these challenges by helping them build effective theories of change; capture progress using measurement, evaluation and learning (MEL) practices; and leverage both their theories of change and MEL to communicate their impact and increase funder confidence.
