Learning, measurement, and evaluation
Our learning, measurement, and evaluation approach is
central to our understanding of how change happens.
Purpose
Our theory of change hypothesizes that long-term, flexible funding and strategic support for locally-rooted organizations strengthens their ability to work with key public systems. This results in more effective and gender-equitable systems, which deliver lasting improvements in people’s lives. Our approach to learning, measurement and evaluation serves three core purposes:
Support program partners to develop purposeful, aligned approaches to learning, measurement and evaluation.
Generate and share lessons about systems change and gender equality.
Generate and share lessons about our approach to philanthropy.
Our approach
Supporting program partners
We want to empower program partners as leaders in systems change. We don’t impose rigid metrics, instead we support partners to define and pursue bold, long-term outcomes. These take account of intersectional complexity and aim to shift systems to improve lives at scale.
Explore our Learning, Measurement, and Evaluation Guidebook to see how we support ambitious, outcomes-driven strategies.
Our approach centers outcomes across our global portfolio. We focus on outcomes at three levels – people, systems, and organizations – allowing our partners’ strategies to remain flexible while emphasizing continuous learning.
We support our partners to develop purposeful, aligned approaches to learning, measurement, and evaluation that help them ask the right questions, adapt strategies, track progress, and stay focused on their core purpose. We walk alongside partners and offer support, trust, and space to learn what works, what doesn’t, and to understand why.
We encourage measurement approaches that are participatory, feminist, and practical, that respect context, uplift marginalized voices, and help everyone to learn. Moving beyond donor compliance, the goal is for partners to lead their own strategies with clarity, ambition, and a sharp focus on outcomes.
Learning what works
Lessons on systems change and philanthropy
Our learning agenda focuses on unpacking our core learning questions:
- Are lives improving?
- Are systems improving?
- Are organizations stronger?
- How do systems change?
- What is the link between our partners’ strategy and systems change?
- What funder practices are most and least helpful?
Our strong learning architecture draws on diverse evidence sources to address these questions – including the narrative reports and dashboards from our program partners, learnings from the regional Communities of Practice (COPs), and collaborations with independent learning partners like IMAGO Grassroots.
In 2020, Co-Impact made a public commitment to evaluate and improve our practices to advance equity and inclusion across our work. Since then, every other year, we engage the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to ask our program partner to provide candid and confidential feedback on our work, approach, and relationships. We take these findings seriously, and use them to improve our approach and practice to be more clear, respectful, and effective.
Through CEP, we recently completed collecting partner feedback for 2025. We will soon share the findings, along with the ways we plan to integrate them into our practice. Explore previous findings here.
Resources
