Across the international humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding sectors, organizations are facing increasing financial pressure due to shifting donor priorities, competing domestic priorities, and rising operational costs. Many are expected to maintain or expand programme delivery and associated accountability and learning activities despite declining or uncertain resources. These pressures are also affecting evaluation functions at international, national, and local levels. As resources become more constrained, evaluators face growing expectations to generate timely and useful evidence while safeguarding evaluation quality, independence, and credibility. This raises important questions about how evaluation systems, approaches, and methods can adapt to changing institutional priorities and operational realities.
Rationale for the discussion
While funding constraints affect organizations across sectors, their implications for evaluation vary depending on institutional mandates, operational contexts, and the populations served. Drawing on the complementary focus areas of EvalforEarth and ALNAP, this discussion will examine these implications across climate action, food security, resilience, humanitarian emergencies, and peacebuilding, with particular attention to the challenges of sustaining credible evidence and accountability in resource-constrained settings.
The discussion will also consider the risks associated with reducing investment in evaluation or failing to incorporate evaluative evidence into strategic and operational decisions, particularly where resources are limited and the consequences of ineffective interventions may be significant.
Purpose of the discussion
The discussion seeks to draw on the experiences of EvalforEarth and ALNAP members to identify practical lessons and recommendations for sustaining effective evaluation systems under financial and operational constraints.
Specifically, it aims to:
- Examine how financial uncertainty is affecting evaluation practice, accountability, organizational learning, and evidence use across different sectors and institutional contexts.
- Identify practical adaptations, innovations, and approaches that can help maintain evaluation quality, independence, and usefulness with limited resources.
- Explore how evaluators and organizations can better demonstrate the value of evaluative evidence and strengthen its use in strategic and operational decision-making.
Guiding discussion questions
Week 1: Implications of funding constraints: How have funding or resource constraints affected evaluation, learning, and accountability processes in your organization or context?
Week 2: Adaptations and practical solutions: How have you or your organization adapted evaluation and learning practices to respond to these constraints?
Week 3: Risks of limited evidence use: What are the risks of excluding evaluative evidence from strategic and operational decision-making, particularly in resource-constrained environments?
Week 4: Looking ahead: What needs to change to sustain credible, independent, and useful evaluation in increasingly resource-constrained environments?
The online discussion will remain open for contributions until 10 November 2026.
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Zimbabwe
Chamisa Innocent
EvalforEarth CoP Facilitator/Coordinator
EvalforEarth CoP
Posted on 13/10/2026
Thank you Jackline, for sharing your experience and reflections. You raise an important point about the shift from learning to compliance and reporting when resources are limited. I agree that the challenge is not necessarily conducting fewer evaluations but losing opportunities for reflection and learning.
I would be interested to hear more about how organisations in your context are balancing donor reporting requirements with learning needs under these constraints.
We also continue to invite other colleagues to contribute to our Week 1 discussion, as highlighted by Mae: How have funding or resource constraints affected evaluation, learning and accountability processes in your organisation or context?
We welcome your experiences, examples and reflections from different contexts.
Kenya
JACKLINE MUSUYA
Monitoring and Evaluation Lead
Hewatele Limited
Posted on 21/10/2026
Thank you, Chamisa. Organisations in my context are using several practical approaches to balance accountability and learning:
The main constraint is that reporting has fixed deadlines and contractual consequences, while learning is often treated as optional. Leadership must therefore protect time for reflection and ensure that evidence is discussed before major programme decisions are made.
Zimbabwe
Wilbert Marimira
MEAL Specialist
CARE International
Posted on 13/10/2026
Thank you for articulating this crucial reality so clearly!
Your point on how funding shocks quietly shift the balance from transformative learning to rigid, compliance-heavy accountability hits at the very core of our sector's challenge. Drawing from my work leading MEAL systems across Education, Humanitarian Response, Social Protection, Climate Resilience, and Livelihoods in Southern Africa & beyond, I resonate deeply with your conclusion, in lean times, evidence doesn't become less valuable, it becomes our primary risk insurance against squandering scarce resources.
The path forward isn't choosing between compliance and learning, but embedding Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting, and Learning (PMERL) directly into routine operations. True sustainability and accountability happen when we put community voices at the forefront and shift their voices, influence, and decision-making closer to the people who understand their realities, engaging local leaders, school heads, and target populations from project design and baseline planning right through to closeout. When stand-alone evaluation budgets shrink, donors and implementers must invest in localized, high-trust mechanisms like Community-Led Monitoring (CLM), Participatory Scorecards, and human-in-the-loop AI evidence synthesis. By transforming routine community feedback into continuous reflection spaces, we ensure that every dollar spent is not only accounted for, but actively driving community-owned impact.
Kenya
JACKLINE MUSUYA
Monitoring and Evaluation Lead
Hewatele Limited
Posted on 21/10/2026
I strongly agree that the solution is not choosing between accountability and learning, but embedding both into routine practice. Community-led monitoring, participatory scorecards and continuous feedback can help protect learning while keeping decisions grounded in community realities.
Philippines
Mae Albiento
Research Officer
ALNAP
Posted on 09/10/2026
Hello everyone,
I am Mae Albiento, a researcher at ALNAP, the global network for advancing humanitarian learning. We are delighted to collaborate with EvalforEarth for this timely and important discussion. I am looking forward to co-facilitating this conversation and to learning with and from all of you.
Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring the impacts of funding constraints on evaluation, learning and accountability, and what these changes mean for our work as evaluators. We know many of you are navigating difficult choices so this is a valuable opportunity to exchange experiences and learn from one another. This space is intended to be open, informal and collaborative and so we encourage you to share your reflections, examples from your context, questions or uncertainties.
To get us started for the first week, we invite you to reflect on our first discussion question:
How have funding or resource constraints affected evaluation, learning and accountability processes in your organisation or context? What has changed in practice, particularly regarding evaluation scope, methods, staffing, frequency, evidence use or engagement with local and national actors?
Please feel free to share a concrete example, experience or reflection from your own work. If possible, please also briefly introduce yourself and indicate your sector or area of work, as this will help us better understand the range of perspectives represented in the discussion.
Thank you for you joining us. We’re looking forward to a thoughtful and rich exchange of ideas and perspectives!