Monitoring and evaluation

Most people involved in running a group, and certainly all of those who have applied for a grant, will have heard the phrase 'monitoring and evaluation'. It isn't always clear, though, exactly what it means. Seen on an application form, or when compiling a report on how money has been spent, it can sometimes seem like a bureaucratic hoop that you need to go through. Used properly, though, monitoring and evaluation can be a very useful tool and, stripped of the jargon, it isn't too complicated:

Monitoring is collecting and recording information about what your group is doing Evaluating is using the information you have collected, together with other information and your overall experience, to get a good clear picture of your group and its work.

Looked at like this almost every group does monitor and evaluate what they do, if only informally: counting how many people turn up at a meeting is monitoring, and chatting about how an event went for a few minutes at the end is evaluation.

Our team of professional has extensive experience in project monitoring and evaluation and are always ready to help you

Impact assessment

We assesses the changes that can be attributed to a particular intervention, such as a project, program or policy, both the intended ones, as well as ideally the unintended ones with an objective to answer the question: how would outcomes such as participants’ well-being have changed if the intervention had not been undertaken by comparing between what actually happened and what would have happened in the absence of the intervention

Impact Evaluation helps you to answer key questions for evidence-based policy making: what works, what doesn’t, where, why and for how much?

Our team of professional has extensive experience in impact assessment and are always ready to help you

Value for money audit

An independent evidence-based investigation which examines and reports on whether economy, effectiveness and efficiency has been achieved in the use of public funds. Objectives

The primary objectives of value for money (VFM) audit are to:  provide the assembly with independent information and advice about how economically, efficiently and effectively departments, agencies and other central government public bodies have used their resources;  encourage audited bodies to improve their performance in achieving value for money and implementing policy; and  Identify good practice and suggest ways in which public services could be improved.

Pre - award assessments.

Increasingly more and more donors require assurance on the capacity and performance of their grantees. This type of assurance can be split into two sections:
• pre-award (prior to the grant-giving)
• post-award (during/after expenditure of the grant)

1) Pre-award

Because funding organizations are often negatively exposed in the media in cases of fraud at their grantees, donors have the increased tendency to have pre-award assessments performed. We focus our assessments mainly on the financial and procedural capacity of the organization which gives insight on areas such as procurement, banking, expenses, authorization, structures, assets and so on. We identify the issue and provide the donor with a useful assessment and supports the grant-giver requires to make the decision. Our professionals will provide the client (donor or recipient) with an in-depth report on findings and recommendations.

2) Post-award

Many grants do not require an audit as such or are so small that an official audit would not be cost effective. The cost of an audit is much higher than a financial review. However, from an accountability point of view (for both donor to the public but grantee to their stakeholders as well) some sort of an assessment during or at the end of the project is deemed useful. For the donor this can be a follow-up on the pre-award assessment: up to what extent has the grantee followed up the recommendations, are there new issues to be reported or are the expenses reported on accurate? Although this assessment does not provide an audit opinion and therefore legally less binding, our clients can still expect an in-depth review. Generally we carry out the following: 

• reconciliations (e.g. fund accountability statement, bank, cash)
• substantive testing of expenses
• testing of policies and procedures
• compliance with grant terms and conditions
• issuing of a report including recommendation

3) Selection of (sub) Recipients and monitoring

One of our major strengths is its in-depth understanding of organisational and financial set-up combined with specific donor rules and regulations. It is for this reason that we have assisted many of our clients on selection of recipients and sub-recipients. If not carried out properly a prime recipient runs an enormous risk, possibly being held liable if there is mismanagement or maybe even fraud at the (sub) recipient.

Once this process has been successfully concluded and the prime and sub-recipient have signed an agreement, we can take up the monitoring in terms of finances but also on the more programmatic side. We takes a holistic approach and believes that finance is closely interlinked with program objectives and results. Having a proper understanding of both is therefore imperative for an excellent service delivery.