this is the monitoring and evaluation boost. With God freezing kaaba. Every week we share tips and practical stories to help you master the monitoring and evaluation job and perform it to your best if you haven't yet, please take a moment to hit that subscribe button so you're automatically updated about new episodes and that way you can continue to grow your money career every day. It also helps to show your support to this podcast and improve its ranking on the platform. We really appreciate that effort. Now let's get started. Hello everyone. This is episode 11 titled The seven best ways of monitoring and evaluation specialists can pre position for a new grand project proposal. My name is Godfrey Cenkova, your host monitoring and evaluation boost podcast. This episode is one of five series where I discuss how monitoring and evaluation specialists can perform their roles to contribute to new business development efforts of their organizations. You may want to check out episodes 12, 13, 14 and 15 for a complete set of tips and ideas on this.

Stop, let's get started status. Every organization need to attract resources to find their business fulfilling. This need may take the form of preparing a project proposal. In response to a donor request. The organization may also prepare evidence briefs on their programmatic impact for staff to use in their fundraising efforts. Some fundraising experts argue that the best way of attracting new resources for programming is to implement already awarded projects with high quality and impact. This not only helps with donor retention but also demonstrable capacity to attract new funding ideally there is that tension between spending more resources on getting a new grant or implement those that you already have implement them well whichever operated organization takes for new business development project teams including monitoring and evaluation specialists play a crucial role. It is important to know what kind of roles you need to perform.

What tasks to undertake, What competencies to develop and what results to expect for a monitoring and evaluation specialists required to contribute to new business or project proposals. Your efforts should aim at proposal competitiveness. Yes, proposal competitiveness by designing robust monitoring and evaluation approaches. But how can I do this you ask? Well, thank you for asking. Let's carry on a typical grant. Project proposal is prepared through five major faces number one. Pre positioning to positioning three proposal development for submission and five for submission in this episode. A share tips for phase one. Pre positioning and cover the rest in the next four episodes. In pre positioning. The organization implements activities and tasks to get her ready to respond to a donor's request for applications. Most of the work in this phase is often done by the business development team or proposal manager or program director depending on organizational structure. More importantly, this work may or may not be visible to the monitoring and evaluation team.

However, it makes a big difference if you as a monitoring and evaluation specialist officer or a money for core point. Know your expected action task here are the seven best ways a monitoring and evaluation specialists can pre position for a new grand project proposal. Number one research the donor monitoring and evaluation interests and priorities. A former donor mapping and assessment is often completed by the organization in preparation for the funding opportunity. Read this report, particularly the section on monitoring and evaluation. If included. Some donors published their monitoring and evaluation policies and approaches on their websites. But remember not all donors have published M and E policy. Whatever the case at minimum, seek to know the M. And E policies and approaches and program design protocols or M. And the requirements of the targeted donor. It is also good practice to research for or look at any published evaluation and or research report from this particular donor that you're targeting.

See how well their programs have been implemented and what kind of monitoring and evaluation approaches are integrated or are researched on. Please note that some donors may not have specific M. And the requirements and maybe open to your own organization of monitoring and evaluation procedures. The request for applications of proposal often provides details on how the donor would like you to structure the monitoring and evaluation. I provide details on this point in the next episode, but let's continue with the propositioning strategies by the monitoring and evaluation specialist strategy number to conduct an organizational design, monitoring and evaluation capacity assessment. If this has not already been done. How position is your institutional monitoring and evaluation capacity to respond to the proposed grant application? What is your organization of monitoring and evaluation policy frameworks or practices? Do you have to implement monitoring and evaluation in a certain way? Do you follow specific procedures? Do you use specific tools and templates?

What is your capacity for monitoring and evaluation as an organization? When I talk about capacity? Yes numbers is included in terms of how many people you have who do M and E. But also the skills, the quality of this stuff. What does monitoring and evaluation look like in a typical project implemented by organization? Who does monitoring and evaluation in a typical project implemented by the organization? Is it your own staff? Is it local hires? Is it partner staff? Is it consultant or any other third party for quality? These decisions depend on the nature and scope of the request for applications and proposals. However, it's a good practice to have this information before the application process begins. For informed decision making. Number three and connected to organizational demand. The capacity system just talked about is the review of the capacity of the local country or the local project where this new grant will be implemented for staffing as we said before and number two. We're also talking about the quality and quantity previous experience with the donor any transferrable experience that the local project has will be very important for the new program if you're targeting malaria project, do you have public health professionals who also double as monitoring and evaluation specialists.

Does your project within the specific country. If you're going to implement a project in Afghanistan, can you really recruit an M. And E specialist within the Afghanistan context or you need to hire internationally? These are questions that you need to really think about and find answers even before you do the actual response to a grant application. You don't have to conclude on them because still the R. F. The request for application will help you give more information on what you need to do but you need to be prepared and starting the process a little bit. Number four. Be clear for the issues that the organization is trying to address many times prior to an application for a grant proposal. An organization will either do a formalized needs assessment or simply review some of the data they have within a particular context. So depending on the capacity of the organization it needs assessment may be led by a consultant or a program team particularly with you as a lead. Take this activity serious and ensure a robust methodologies followed, ensure that appropriate analysis is done and that the recommendation are usable.

You'll be needing this during the design workshop or design activity or you'll be needing this during the design exercise that you need to undertake in the coming phase is your role here as an M. And a specialists is to perform data analysis and if its assessment is entirely done by a consultant provide quality review. The bottom line is that the data that comes through the needs assessment can be used to inform decisions but surely on what implementation approaches the organization might be taking. What kind of needs and issues are apparent in the area where you want to implement a new project. Number five, complement this with a review of internal project evidence of impact review project performance and provide data to project managers to strengthen their written justification for additional funding. Sometimes approval of new funding may require preparation of a new project proposal. Number six gather market intelligence including surveying trending M Andy approaches within the industry, especially international development and using this evidence to inform your M and E approaches in the new proposal, be sure to assess what is trending.

For example, people talking about localizing development, people are talking about third party monitoring what does this really mean to you within international development people are moving away from calling beneficiaries beneficiaries because this has a connotation of powerlessness and also looking at people who are sited there waiting to be provided without tapping in their agency. The industry is moving away from such terms and we're now talking about participants. If the donor is going to be writing in their application, naming those who are going to participate in the program, still calling them beneficiaries and you know that the industry is moving away from that. That's really something nice and good for you to include in your proposal and suggest to the donor. Why this has to change because it shows that you're keeping up with the trends. But again, some donors talking about participant identification and tracking even with community based interventions in the past, it wasn't a requirement.

But now when you look at most of the indicators, donors would prefer that you propose it management information system database. That can attract a database that can help you track unique participants. Because most of the indicators will be requiring you to provide an individual account of participants who are served through your program and that they shouldn't be in a double counting. What are you approaching? What your strategies for this as an organization? How are you going to address some of those issues? Especially to do with indicators that will require you to keep a clean record of individual account. But even if you are able to do that, how about the country where you're going to implement this? For example, when you talk about Ethiopia where the government will be requiring that you follow their own datasets. Does the country even allow you to do a mapping of participants and having a registry of those participants, you and your donor or they will be requiring to follow government statistics. This is part of the intelligence that you need together and help the organization? No. Remember we've talked about donor m and practices and approaches and now we're also talking about what is trending in the industry.

Lastly, number seven, which should be an ongoing activity attending and presenting a donor for hours. Sometimes winning grants just takes you to be present. Just be present everywhere, advise your program directors. And what I'm speaking about now is for everyone. Program directors already know this. But even is the organization known to have good monitoring and evaluation approaches? Can your organization be trusted with implementing program with good quality and impact for all those programs that you are implementing now? What is it that you're learning? Can you be a game changer? Can you take lead? Is the organization able to deliver these programs with high quality and with impact. What is it that you've learned over time? Just be present. Make those connections let the donor no. Or at least let the industry know that when it comes to food security you have the best approach is when it comes to connecting food security and resilience. The organization is among the top three. And even if you look organization in kenya or in Uganda or Tanzania, just do well talk about it.

Talk about it whatever opportunity you get talked about it and I. M and G. We're also challenged to be doing the same if we follow these strategies, number one, researching the donor monitoring and evaluation interests and priorities. Number two conducting an organizational monitoring and evaluation capacity assessment. Number three reviewing the capacity of the local implementing program or country. Number four needs assessment number five internal project evidence of impact number six market M and intelligence and number seven big present and participating in organizational forums where you publish your evidence or participating in donor forums basically getting to be known as an organization that is strong. M and again the job of fundraising. The job of attracting new business is usually not ours as monitoring and evaluation specialists but even if it isn't ours were expected to contribute to it. In this series, I discuss five key phases and highlight our roles and responsibilities and sometimes learning from experience what we might be expected in this podcast.

11 have talked about pre positioning. Our job is usually silent. It's asked actually by proxy that we come in and support the business development managers. But as we roll through the other phases you will see that we take a prominent role. Thank you so much. This is it for today. Look out for the next episode so that you can get a complete idea of what your roles and responsibilities as a monitoring and evaluation specialists When it comes to new business develop all many of you may quality proposal development. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you for listening to the monitoring and evaluation boost. With Godfrey sent Kaba. Please let us know your comments or any topics you would like to hear. And please check out our website, www. Dot M and e boost dot com. If you have comments about this episode or experiences you would like to share regarding the ideas discussed in this podcast. Please let us know again. Please visit our website to share. That's W W W dot M and e boost dot com.

Thank you. Yeah. Mhm.