Evaluation under pressure : Strengthening evidence use, accountability and learning amidst funding constraints (Joint EvalforEarth-ALNAP discussion)

I have been very concerned about how the evaluation effort has failed the smallholder communities and what can be done about it. I have also reviewed a massive text on evaluations and took the opportunity to respond to the text coordinator. I thought you might be interest in my response and references from the Smallholder Agriculture website I manage. This follows.

Thank you

Dick Tinsley

My response and references follow:

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I have been going through your massive text on evaluations. It is quite an undertaking and takes some time to fully review. Please allow me to comment on some concerns I have about evaluations as they apply to smallholder farming communities. I think they have massively failed smallholder communities on two counts. They continue to endorse the use of producer organizations that the smallholders have 90% avoid, squandering billions of dollars annually on projects rejected by the intended beneficiaries. And, failed to identify that smallholder communities have very limited labor, and that labor is severely under nourished to undertake agronomic field work expected of them, limiting the “operational feasibility” of innovations developed and promoted for their benefit resulting in minimal acceptance of recommendations. This can be clearly visible by casual observations of the 8-week spread in crop management activities. Or how intensive the field activity is in the morning but limited in the afternoon even with massive work need and family food security at risk. How can evaluation identify this and get it addressed so smallholder development can advance?

My overview thoughts are that Evaluations are only of value to the extent they guide future projects to better serve the beneficiaries. Yes, they may be a legal requirement and document presumed accomplishment, but this is history, and ultimate value is how they guides future projects. Also, if you look closely at the 2+ year with million+ US$ invested between conception and implementation, the limited role the beneficiaries have in the process, the rigidity of the final contracts and committed staffing, projects are mostly imposed on the smallholder communities. This forces any post implementation participatory input to be leveraged to what the contract already agreed and staffed accordingly. Also, it is the implementors that prepare the periodic progress reports with limited input for the beneficiaries and pragmatic mandate to appease the donors by proclaiming the overall success of the project. With these restrictions in upfront beneficiary participation and periodic reporting the evaluations become the “ultimate voice of the beneficiaries” and opportunity to indicate their satisfactory or avoidance of the effort.

With these brief comment my I request you glace through the following webpages with possible links to other pages and tell me what you think and how these concerns can be included in future evaluation of smallholder communities so we can move past the reliance on producer organizations and address the operational feasibility of innovation including those concentrated on sustainability and resilience. 

Thank you for your indulgence,

Dick Tinsley, Professor Emeritus

Soil & Crop Sciences Department

Colorado State University

Linked Webpages:

https://labs.agsci.colostate.edu/tinsley/research/development-process/#monitoring

https://labs.agsci.colostate.edu/tinsley/research/supporting-value-chains/#taxpayers-expectations

https://labs.agsci.colostate.edu/tinsley/research/development-process/#operational-feasibility

https://labs.agsci.colostate.edu/tinsley/research/dietary-energy-deficit/#caloric-energy-balance

In my view, funding and resource constraints affect evaluation, learning, and accountability because these processes require adequate finances, skilled personnel, time, and reliable data systems. When resources are limited, field monitoring may be reduced, evaluations may be delayed, and staff may lack opportunities to learn from project experiences. Furthermore, accountability can be weakened when organizations cannot adequately verify results or report their activities to stakeholders.
“However, organizations can manage these challenges by prioritizing key evaluation activities, adopting cost-effective data collection methods, strengthening staff capacity, and involving beneficiaries in monitoring and feedback. I believe that evaluation, learning, and accountability should not be viewed as optional activities but as essential investments that help organizations improve performance, demonstrate results, and use limited resources more effectively.”
Key message: Limited funding may restrict what an organization can evaluate, but effective planning, learning, prioritization, and transparency can help ensure that available resources still produce meaningful results.

My engagements with development and humanitarian organizations, and especially local civil society organizations, suggest that as financial resources decline, there is a growing risk that M&E will be deprioritized, particularly where its value for organizational learning and strategic decision-making has not been sufficiently institutionalized. Several evaluations are donor requirements, but when not donor-driven, efforts in evidence generation for decision-making are often centered on project achievements and success stories rather than systematically generated evidence. While this does not necessarily imply that evaluations are not conducted, it raises concerns about how evidence is documented, retained, and used. In resource-constrained environments, excluding such evidence risks repeating ineffective approaches, misallocating scarce resources, weakening accountability to communities, and missing opportunities for program adaptation and improvement.

Thank you to EvalforEarth and ALNAP. This is a timely and very relevant discussion.

The shrinking of  finances is affecting organization including humanitarian, development and  Civil societies hence the fundamental questions about the sustainability of evaluation systems, particularly in low and middle-income countries.

From my experience working across health systems, climate change, gender equality, education, humanitarian programs and institutional capacity strengthening in Africa, I believe the challenge is not simply how to conduct evaluations with fewer resources, but how to sustain the value, credibility and use of evaluation when resources are shrinking.

A few highlights come to mind.

Evaluation aspects should not always be the first casualty of funding cuts.

Depending on different leadership, where resources are perceived to have declined, evaluation, and learning activities are often the first to be reduced or completely eliminated. Yet these are the moments when organizations need credible evidence to determine the interventions that could affect life, those that deliver results, areas where resources are being wasted, areas that need interventions to be adapted and areas that can wait for a Phase in process and programmes to be sustained.

Funding constraints should not compromise ethics, quality and independence

In resource-constrained environments, there may be pressure to reduce sample sizes, shorten data collection periods, rely on virtual data collection or limit engagement and FPIC with communities. This could improve efficiency, but will weaken the credibility and inclusiveness of evaluation findings. And especially on vulnerable populations, marginalized communities and hard-to-reach areas, where meaningful participation requires additional time and resources.

 Local evaluators and organizations should not be overlooked

Declining evaluation budgets usually leads to the transfer of financial and operational risks to national evaluators, local consultancy firms and community-based organizations. They may be expected to deliver complex evaluations within compressed timelines and reduced budgets, while still meeting international quality standards. This raises the questions of fairness, equitable partnerships and localization.

Demonstrate that evaluation is an investment in better decisions, not merely a compliance requirement

As our forefathers said, never waste a crisis; seize it as an opportunity. The funding pressures could be used to strengthen the connection between evaluation evidence and strategic decision-making. Evaluators need to communicate not only on what is achieved, but also how the findings influence resource allocation, adaptation, institutional learning and accountability to affected populations.

In resource-constrained environments, excluding evaluative evidence from strategic and operational decisions creates more than an information gap. It increases the risk that already limited resources will be directed towards interventions that are ineffective, poorly targeted or unresponsive to changing needs.

One major risk is the continuation of activities based on assumptions rather than demonstrated results. Without evidence on implementation challenges, unintended outcomes and community experiences, organisations may continue investing in approaches that appear successful in activity reports but produce limited meaningful change.

A second risk is that the needs of less visible groups may be overlooked. Routine administrative data often capture what is easiest to count, while evaluations can reveal differences in access, participation and outcomes across locations and population groups. When evaluative evidence is excluded, decisions may favour well-documented needs while marginalising communities whose experiences are poorly represented in existing information systems.

Limited evidence use also weakens organisational learning. Teams may repeat implementation problems, lose valuable lessons when programmes close and struggle to explain why particular results were achieved. Under financial pressure, such mistakes become more costly because organisations have less capacity to absorb ineffective spending.

Finally, excluding evaluation findings can weaken accountability. Communities may provide feedback without seeing how their contributions influence programme decisions, while management responses and follow-up actions remain undocumented.

The solution is not necessarily to conduct more evaluations. It is to protect the use of essential evidence by integrating evaluation findings into planning meetings, resource-allocation decisions, risk reviews and management-response processes. When resources are scarce, evidence should become more influential, not less.

Week 2 summary and introduction to Week 3: What are the risks of excluding evaluative evidence from strategic and operational decision-making, particularly in resource-constrained environments?

Many thanks to all who contributed on our second week of the discussion: Wilbert Marimira, MUKUNZI Olivier, Dr. Uzodinma Akujekwe Adirieje, Eriasafu Lubowa, Abdoul Aziz Bonkoungou, Ayuk James Ebot, Diene Ndiaye, Stephanie Jill Hodge, LEANDRE KOUOTOU NGOUCHEME, Rhode Early Charles, and Atta B. Jacob KOBENAN (PhD).

Overall, Week 2 contributions show that organisations are finding ways to adapt to the funding constraints: being more selective about what they evaluate, asking more focused evaluation questions, making better use of existing data, using digital tools and remote data collection, drawing on local expertise and knowledge, embedding evaluation in programme management, and finding practical ways to make findings more accessible and actionable. 

Here, we highlight three key messages:

1. It’s not about doing less evaluation, but being smarter and strategic about what we evaluate. As Diene Ndiaye, Stephanie Jill Hodge and Rhode Early Charles highlighted, limited budgets make it even more important to focus on the questions that matter, make better use of existing data and avoid duplication. The goal is to do less where necessary, without losing the evidence needed to make good decisions.
2. Local knowledge and collaboration are part of the solution. Eriasafu Lubowa, Wilbert Marimira and Ayuk James Ebot shared how peer reviews, local expertise and community-led approaches can make evaluation more affordable while keeping it grounded in people’s realities. These approaches can also build local capacity and ensure that community perspectives are not lost when resources are stretched.
3. Evidence only matters if we actually use it. Leandre Kouotou Ngoucheme, Eriasafu Lubowa and Diene Ndiaye highlighted the value of digital monitoring, practical recommendations and targeted dissemination of findings. When budgets are tight, evaluation needs to do more than produce reports; it needs to help organisations adapt, make better decisions and learn from both successes and failures.

But doing evaluation with fewer resources shouldn't mean losing sight of what makes it valuable. Even with fewer resources, organisations need evidence they can trust, learning that leads to action, and approaches that take seriously the knowledge and experiences of local actors and affected communities.

The discussion therefore raises an important question for organisations and donors alike: when evaluation budgets shrink, how can we protect the core functions of evaluation—credible evidence, accountability to affected people, independent scrutiny and organisational learning—while changing the way we deliver them?

And so, for our Week 3 discussion, we focus our attention on the risks of limited evidence use. 

Our guiding question for this week is:

What are the risks of excluding evaluative evidence from strategic and operational decision-making, particularly in resource-constrained environments?

I encourage everyone to build on the contributions from Weeks 1 & 2 and continue to engage directly with one another. We look forward to reading your insights and experiences. The discussion will be open until 10 November 2026. 

How are organisations adapting evaluation and learning practices amid funding constraints?

Cutting MEAL field visits to save money was the single biggest mistake we made.

When funding ran tight across our climate resilience projects in Bikita, Chiredzi, and Mutare, we initially tried replacing field visits with phone surveys. The data came back thin, and communities felt abandoned because nobody was sitting down to talk with them. 

We realised that the real challenge was not merely reducing the cost of evaluation; it was enhancing its value for decision-making and organizational learning.

To fix this, we shifted monitoring directly into the hands of local women and youth; we trained them on offline KoBoToolbox etc and participatory community scorecards using basic Android phones. We instituted a robust feedback uptake mechanism; we realised that instead of waiting for an endline, community monitors shared scorecard data during quarterly reflection sessions right in the wards. 

That single move cut routine M&E costs by nearly 30% while transforming data into immediate action. In Chiredzi, for instance, paper reports showed great seed distribution numbers, but community scorecards revealed farmers were losing livestock to dry spells and lacked feed preservation knowledge. Because our feedback loop forced a direct link between field evidence and project adjustments, we immediately pivoted activities toward traditional grain multiplication and fodder preservation. 

To keep data objective, our MEAL team combined internal spot-checks with peer evaluation reviews across ward teams, catching errors early while building local ownership. 

If I had to do it again, I’d build community-led monitoring and active feedback uptake loops into project design from day one, not wait for a budget squeeze to force the shift. 

Lesson learned: Data is only as valuable as the decisions it drives, and it is only as trusted as the people collecting, analysing and reporting it

From an economic and analytical perspective, the convergence of declining fiscal resources and rising demand for accountability creates a structural paradox that requires substituting legacy, capital-intensive field evaluations with lean, digital data pipelines and econometric modeling. By transitioning from expensive manual tracking to open-source geospatial modeling for climate action, real-time mobile price tracking for food security, and econometric simulations for resilience testing, organizations can compress data-collection loops and drive marginal monitoring costs toward zero. Similarly, deploying transaction metadata audits in humanitarian emergencies and algorithmic sentiment mapping in volatile peacebuilding zones eliminates high logistical and security overheads. This strategic integration of automated data systems optimizes resource allocation, directly enhancing donor attraction and protecting evaluation independence by turning raw operational metrics into transparent, credible, and highly rigorous proof of social impact within tight financial constraints.

ADAPTING EVALUATION UNDER FUNDING PRESSURE: ‘AHOA’s EXPERIENCE/PERSPECTIVE

Under funding pressure, AHOA treats evaluation as a routine management function, building accountability into delivery rather than adding it afterwards. Two projects led by Dr. Adirieje show how.

WHAT HAS WORKED 

In the UNDEF-funded Sustainable Citizen Participation (SCP) Project (2017-18), AHOA worked across nine Niger Delta states and 81 LGAs, delivering through local sub-implementing partners such as ACERD in Delta State. Citizens and CSO leaders were trained to generate and use local evidence, and advocacy visits reached state governors. Press coverage recorded government engagement, including Delta State's partnership with AHOA and Abia State's pledge of support for the training. This created a public accountability record at almost no extra cost.

In the Global Fund-supported Nigeria Malaria Matchbox assessment (2020), Dr. Adirieje served as a national consultant, with AHOA network members supporting fieldwork in Adamawa, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe. Locally recruited interviewers working in local languages reached 809 respondents, over 60% women, in four weeks. Findings were validated at a stakeholder workshop before action planning.

WHAT HAS NOT WORKED

Time and resources prevented transcribing every focus group, and KoboCollect handled extended qualitative data poorly, so teams returned to recordings and notes. Participation also suffered where respondents expected compensation was not provided within the Project architecture

BALANCING TRADE-OFFS 

Cost was contained through local capacity, not by dropping rigour: consent, triangulation and validation were retained. It is my considered view to keep routine learning cheap and internal, reserve independent evaluation for high-stakes questions, and report limitations openly.

I have two opinions to share regarding the adaptation of evaluation and learning practices in light of the current financial uncertainty. Thanks to the members for their views on the Week 1 topic.

First, promoting peer evaluation within the organization’s network. Over the years, I have learned that development and humanitarian organizations often hire experienced full-time M&E staff. However, they spend additional money on expensively contracted external evaluators. Sometimes these are even global consultants because the contracting organization wants independent and trusted feedback. But this comes at a high cost, even as high as $100,000 USD. Moreover, if the feedback uptake mechanism and culture are weak, the evaluation findings, lessons, and recommendations will not be used to their fullest extent. I think that evaluation practice, in its true sense, requires more than just investing money in evaluation expertise. I have advocated for the organization to develop a network of evaluators comprising key internal M&E staff, researchers, and other M&E staff, and have suggested establishing an ad hoc, standby evaluation team. Relevant people who can always team up when needed to conduct an evaluation. To avoid potential biases and conflicts of interest, the organization conducting the evaluation would invest more in strengthening its evaluation process management, facilitation, and quality assurance. It would leverage its internal M&E expertise rather than fully contracting evaluators. Although this adaptation is still far-fetched, for me, the peer approach in evaluation will not only reduce the substantial costs of externally contracted evaluations but also enhance peer learning within the network while maintaining accountability.

Second, mixing short- and long-term, cost-effective evaluation recommendations. I always ensure that the evaluations I lead generate actionable feedback, with at least more than 50% of the evaluation recommendations feasible for immediate, cost-effective management response. This is different from when all the recommendations (which usually require more time) call for large amounts of money to accomplish. No wonder: from personal experience, not many organizations put as much effort into the Management Response Plan after an evaluation as they do into the evaluation itself. Integrating short- and long-term, cost-effective evaluation recommendations will give the organization room to spend smaller amounts, first on cost-effective actions. 

I would like to thank EvalforEarth and ALNAP for initiating this discussion, in which I would like to share three lessons learnt from over twenty-five years’ experience. This issue directly affects the public administrations of partner countries, which commission or receive evaluations whilst their resources are dwindling.

1. Evaluate less, but better. Budgetary constraints mean choices have to be made. An evaluation that answers three questions relevant to decision-making is better than one that ticks all the DAC’s boxes without sufficient resources. Questions must be chosen in consultation with decision-makers right from the design stage, rather than added at the end of the project.

2. Make the most of existing data. Government departments produce a great deal of routine data, but this is often under-utilised. An evaluation based on these systems costs less. It also strengthens existing systems rather than creating parallel data collection efforts that disappear once the project ends.

3. Safeguard the integrity of the evaluation. When funding becomes scarce, there is a temptation to publish only positive results. This would be a serious mistake. Documented failures are often what prove most useful for subsequent projects. Donors have a role to play: they must demonstrate that a well-analysed assessment of failure will not automatically result in the loss of funding.

Finally, learning should not stop with the report. A brief and targeted presentation to technical departments and professional organisations costs little and is far more useful than voluminous reports that nobody reads.

Diène NDIAYE, Fisheries Engineer, Senegal

This discussion on ‘Evaluation under pressure’ raises a fundamental challenge: the need to continue producing relevant, useful and timely data despite declining and uncertain resources. To address directly the question of ‘adaptations and practical solutions’ for coping with these funding constraints, I would like to highlight the strategic role of the digitalisation of evaluation practices.

In a context of budgetary constraints, the shift to digital evaluations makes it possible to drastically reduce logistical costs (travel, paper-based surveys) whilst expanding the geographical coverage of data collection.

A concrete and inspiring example is that of Cameroon’s Ministry of Youth and Civic Education. To overcome the challenges posed by limited resources, we have adopted online monitoring and evaluation practices to capture real-time data from our services, which extend across the country’s 360 districts.

This digital approach has had a twofold impact:

- continuous updating of indicators: The data collected online is used to reliably and rapidly update the performance indicators for the Ministry’s various programmes;

- operational adjustment: Operational services in the field rely on this feedback to adjust their actions and take concrete steps towards achieving the objectives linked to these programmes.

Beyond mere economic efficiency, this digital transition is profoundly transforming the dynamics of learning and accountability inherent in monitoring and evaluation. On the one hand, the traceability and near-instantaneous accessibility of data enhance transparency and accountability towards stakeholders, making it possible to demonstrate quickly how resources (even limited ones) generate impact. On the other hand, it catalyses continuous organisational learning: thanks to much shorter feedback loops, decision-makers and teams on the ground no longer have to wait until the end of a project cycle to draw lessons. They can identify structural challenges and readjust their intervention strategies in real time.

In conclusion, digitalisation does not replace methodological rigour, but it represents a practical innovation for maintaining the value of evaluation and strengthening its integration into strategic decision-making, thereby ensuring that evaluation remains a dynamic management tool rather than a mere a posteriori compliance exercise, even when budgets are under severe pressure.

Monitoring: The Overlooked Foundation of Cost-Efficient Evaluation

Many useful suggestions have already been shared on EvalforEarth and other platforms on adapting evaluation to funding constraints. In my previous contributions, I have emphasized making evaluation reports useful beyond donor accountability, including for business development, government planning, and national data needs, while applying lean data principles. To this, I would add a point I believe is often overlooked: monitoring is too often treated as the poor relation of MEAL, minimized or separated from evaluation, when both should belong to the same evidence system.

A well-designed monitoring system combines quantitative indicators with participants' perspectives. Numbers help us understand whether progress is occurring, while people's experiences help us interpret what that progress means. Why wait for a midterm or final evaluation to identify problems that could have been addressed earlier? Evaluation should not be the first time an organization learns whether its intervention is succeeding. It should build on monitoring evidence, independently test emerging findings, and investigate underlying explanations that routine monitoring cannot capture.

There is also a strong cost-efficiency argument. Projects already invest heavily in developing monitoring systems and conducting data quality assessments. Where monitoring data are reliable and suitable for the evaluation questions, establishing parallel data-collection systems is an unnecessary duplication of scarce resources. Instead, reliable and regularly updated participant records can serve as sampling frames. Existing databases, data-collection tools, feedback mechanisms, and logistical arrangements can all support evaluation activities. This reduces duplication and allows limited resources to be directed toward questions requiring deeper investigation.

Of course, this approach is not appropriate for every evaluation. Some methodologies require completely independent data collection, specialized sampling, or additional safeguards to protect evaluation independence and minimize bias. Reusing monitoring infrastructure does not necessarily mean relying on programme staff to collect evaluation data. However, in my experience, many project evaluations do not involve particularly complex survey designs, and opportunities to make better use of existing monitoring systems remain vastly underexplored.

The persistent disconnect between monitoring and evaluation represents a missed opportunity and an unnecessary use of scarce resources. Under financial pressure, the answer is not necessarily to collect more data or conduct fewer evaluations. It is to design monitoring systems from the outset to support the entire evaluation cycle, helping identify emerging evaluation questions, inform the choice and timing of evaluations, strengthen evaluability, and make better use of evidence already available. Perhaps we should spend less time asking how to make evaluations cheaper and more time asking whether our monitoring systems are designed to make evaluations more efficient, credible, and useful.

Evaluation under pressure: maintaining the quality of evidence and strengthening its use in decision-making

In my experience of managing development projects, particularly within the Canadian organisation where I currently work, monitoring and evaluation plays a key role in assessing results, ensuring accountability to partners and guiding decision-making. Working with monitoring forms, data collection questionnaires and outcome measurement tools has shown me that the availability of data does not necessarily guarantee its effective use.

Budgetary constraints can limit field visits, interviews with beneficiaries and post-intervention follow-up. They sometimes lead organisations to prioritise the production of reports within the set deadlines at the expense of an in-depth analysis of the changes observed.

In the face of these constraints, we can adapt our practices by simplifying data collection tools without sacrificing key indicators, standardising forms and making use of data that is already available. The use of remote interviews is also an option where the context (a good internet connection) allows it. However, my experience of data processing reminds me of the importance of checking data consistency and taking into account the limitations of the methods used. In capacity-building initiatives, for example, the immediate results of a training course are not sufficient to demonstrate that the skills acquired are actually being applied. A follow-up at a later stage – within the next 6 to 9 months – enables us to better assess how well the skills have been taken on board and their contribution to the expected changes.

In my view, budgetary constraints require, above all, better prioritisation of information needs and the integration of lessons learnt into day-to-day project management. We must also preserve the independence of evaluation and share lessons learnt with stakeholders. Even under budgetary pressure, evaluation must be regarded as a strategic investment that helps to improve interventions, rather than as a secondary expense.

FROM COMPILANCE TO ADAPTATION : Rebalancing learning and Accountability Under pressure ;

The current climate of shrinking budgets introduces a dangerous double burden : 

Organizations face greater operational hurdles while scaling back the very monitoring, evaluation, and learning ( MEL) systems required to navigate them. When resources contract Institutional survival often defaults to rigid compliiance over reflective learning.However," doing more with less" must mean doing things differently,not doing the same things poorly.

This Funding crises is a critical juncture to shift toward learner,adaptive evidence systems 

• Leverage existing knowledge : When primary data collection budgets are cut the value of existing data sky-rockets. Organizations should prioritize cross-portfolio meta-evaluations and use human-guided AI tools to synthesize historical data. This uncovers deep existing community insights without the high cost of new heavy fieldwork 

  - Democratize with lean localized methods : Accountability should not be treated as disposable overhead. By designing highly targeted evaluations- focusing strictly on the absolute minimum evidence decision-makes need-and swapping expensive workshops for community hosted dialogues,we preserve local Accountability on a minimal budget 

  - Evidence the cost of inaction : Evaluation is a protective investment not a bureaucratic cost. Operating blindly in volatile sectors like climate resilience or food Security carries immense risk. Cutting MEL entirely wastes years of systemic capacity - building and locks implementers into repeating hidden programmatic failures.

  We must protect evaluation loops to insure that the scarce Funding remaining,is funneled exclusively into proven, adaptive interventions 

   

   

WEEK 1 CONTRIBUTION: THE IMPACT OF FUNDING CONSTRAINTS ON EVALUATION, LEARNING AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN WEST AFRICA 

Funding and resource constraints have significantly affected the scope, frequency, depth and inclusiveness of monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) across West Africa. In Nigeria, where many civil society organizations depend on project-based donor funding, uncertainty in funding often translates into reduced evaluation budgets, fewer field visits, limited staffing, inadequate data management, and diminished opportunities for communities to participate meaningfully in assessing interventions intended to benefit them. 

From the perspective of Afrihealth Optonet Association (AHOA), these challenges are particularly important in health systems strengthening, universal health coverage (UHC), climate action, humanitarian response, and community-led development. Evaluation is sometimes treated as a secondary project cost rather than an essential management and accountability function. Consequently, organizations may prioritize immediate service delivery while reducing investment in determining whether interventions are effective, equitable, sustainable and responsive to beneficiaries’ needs. 

A practical example is AHOA’s experience in citizen monitoring of development projects under a UN Democracy Fund-supported initiative in the Niger Delta. The project engaged more than 1,600 monitors across 81 local government areas in nine Niger Delta states. Such extensive geographical coverage demonstrates the value of community-based evidence in identifying implementation gaps, strengthening citizen participation and promoting public accountability. However, sustaining this approach requires resources for training, transportation, data collection, verification, communication and feedback to communities. When resources are inadequate, monitoring coverage, verification quality and the timeliness of reporting can suffer. 

Similar challenges arise in malaria programming and vulnerability assessments involving internally displaced persons and refugees in northeastern Nigeria. In fragile and humanitarian settings, insecurity, difficult terrain, population mobility and the vulnerability of affected communities make reliable evidence particularly costly to generate. Reducing monitoring resources in these contexts risks excluding precisely those populations whose needs are least visible in routine administrative data. 

Funding constraints also affect learning. Organizations may collect information to satisfy donor reporting requirements without having sufficient resources or time to convene reflection sessions, document lessons, share findings or translate recommendations into programme improvements. Accountability can consequently become predominantly upward-facing, focused on funders rather than equally responsive to communities and local institutions. 

My central observation is that resource constraints do not simply reduce the quantity of evaluation; they can fundamentally change whose experiences count, which questions are investigated and how evidence informs decisions. 

AHOA’s experience reinforces the need to protect essential evaluation functions, prioritize high-value questions, strengthen community-generated evidence and integrate monitoring and learning into programme implementation. Even where comprehensive evaluations are unaffordable, organizations must preserve minimum standards of independence, methodological credibility, inclusion, transparency and feedback. 

The ultimate test is not how much an organization spends on evaluation, but whether the evidence it generates helps improve outcomes, use resources responsibly and demonstrate accountability to the people it serves. 

Adapting, Navigating, and Owning - Safeguarding Evaluation Integrity, Accountability, and Learning in Lean Times

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

In times of financial crisis, shrinking aid budgets and sudden donor cuts often tempt organizations to "go fast and alone" relying on top-down, rapid internal assessments and cutting local participation to save time and money. However, if evaluation is to remain relevant, ethical, and sustainable amid growing funding constraints, we must choose to "go far together." Reduced resources do not have to mean compromised quality or silenced local voices; rather, they present a vital opportunity to strip away bloated, extractive evaluation practices and return to what truly matters: actionable learning, technical integrity, and genuine, community-led accountability.

Building directly on this principle, operational experience across Southern Africa, specifically in the, Education, Social Protection, Climate Resilience, and Livelihoods sectors, teaches a clear lesson: funding shocks do not have to destroy evaluation quality, but they do demand that we adapt. Managing emergency MEAL systems in drought-prone districts such as Gokwe North, Mutare Rural, Bikita, and Chiredzi showed how field realities, practical missteps, and localised adaptations serve as our best teachers for protecting evaluation integrity under pressure.

I also noted that in resource-constrained settings, traditional, expensive evaluation models, such as heavy, stand-alone quantitative surveys at the end of every project cycle, are financially unsustainable. To maintain evidence, use without compromising technical rigor, here are some key practical experiences we employed:

• Climate Resilience & Livelihoods: Instead of relying solely on high-cost external evaluations, we shifted toward lean, continuous feedback loops. Integrating Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) alongside local partners (such as Agritex and the Meteorological Services Department) and implementing Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) in rural wards allowed agricultural teams to adapt seed distribution and conservation farming models in real time using routine community observations.
• Education & Social Protection Initiatives: For social protection pilots targeting vulnerable populations and adolescent girls in districts like Mutare Rural and Buhera, we utilized Participatory Community Scorecards. Placing evaluation tools directly into the hands of school development committees, parents, and local leaders yielded rich qualitative feedback on cash transfer transparency and school attendance barriers at a fraction of traditional survey costs.

Also, demonstrating true professional integrity means owning operational missteps, reflecting on the friction between ideal textbook methodologies and field realities, and adapting to serve communities better. Here are two practical mistakes from my journey in Zimbabwe and beyond, the core lessons they taught me:

Mistake 1: "Data Hoarding" in Emergency Livelihoods & Food Security

The Experience: During an emergency response project in drought-affected wards, I was determined to capture everything. I designed a statistically exhaustive sampling frame with a 45-page questionnaire covering detailed household demographics, livelihood assets, and granular food consumption scores across multiple districts. The data collection somewhat drained our transport budget, exhausted our small field team, and generated a massive backlog of raw data. The  Lesson: Collect only what you will use. Integrity is not about generating the largest dataset; it is about delivering timely, actionable evidence when decision-makers and communities actually need it. High-pressure evaluation requires radical prioritization around "Must-Know" vs. "Nice-to-Know" metrics. Using targeted cluster sampling, lean digital survey platforms (such as KoBoToolbox or ODK), and concise indicators protects both project resources and community time.

The Experience: Faced with a sudden 15% budget cut midway through a Longitudinal education and social protection project, our team worked to absorb costs by trimming internal staffing without compromising quality, travel stipends, and administrative overhead. However, seeking further savings to preserve the core quantitative survey for the donor, we initially canceled formal, hotel-based validation workshops. Recognizing that target communities, school heads, and local leaders were at risk of being left in the dark, we quickly pivoted to ensure local stakeholders remained our top priority.

The Human Reality: In earlier project phases, failing to return findings promptly had led community leaders to express deep frustration at feeling treated as mere data sources rather than equal partners. Learning from that initial friction, we realised that maintaining trust/accountability required putting local leaders, school heads, and community members first, even when formal budgets were depleted. 

The Lesson: Accountability is not an optional overhead line to be trimmed; it is the core of project ethics. When funding is tight, prioritizing communities, school heads, and local leaders means localising accountability rather than abandoning it. Instead of expensive hotel venues, hosting low-cost ward dialogues under a tree using indigenous language summaries ensured that local stakeholders were prioritized as true co-owners of evaluation findings without financial strain.

 Practical Questions & Adaptive Approaches for Lean Evaluation

To maintain evaluation usefulness, rigor, and ethical standards when budgets are tight, grounding evaluation design in strategic questions and adaptive methods is essential:

Core Guiding Questions to Ask Early:

1. “What is the absolute minimum evidence decision-makers (both community leaders and project managers) need right now to act?”
2. “What existing routine monitoring data, school attendance records, or climate trend datasets can we synthesize before spending on primary data collection?”
3. “How can local community structures participate as co-evaluators rather than passive data subjects, reducing external consultant costs while building lasting capacity?”

Here are some practical approaches that worked for us:

• Consortium & Joint Evaluations: Rather than individual agencies conducting siloed evaluations in overlapping operational zones, pooling vehicles, enumerator pools, and technical resources through joint multi-agency monitoring visits reduces administrative overhead and prevents survey fatigue among communities.
• Responsible AI Integration: Utilizing human-in-the-loop AI workflows (such as localized LLMs or qualitative analysis tools) for initial thematic coding of open-ended community feedback dramatically cuts analysis time and reporting costs, enabling small MEAL teams to process large volumes of qualitative data efficiently.
• Lean Qualitative Impact Methods: When sample sizes for large quantitative surveys are financially unfeasible, methodologies like Outcome Harvesting, Contribution Analysis, and the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique offer high-rigor, cost-effective ways to establish plausibility and capture qualitative impact across education and livelihood interventions.

Funding constraints force us to strip away unnecessary complexity and focus on what truly matters: actionable learning, community agency, and genuine accountability. When we ground our evaluation approaches in local realities, whether in Southern Africa or elsewhere across the globe, we ensure that evidence remains a vital tool for positive change, regardless of budget size.

I look forward to hearing how other colleagues across the Eval4Earth community are adapting their systems to stay effective and resilient!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilbert-marimira-b7321b80

Aid Cuts and the Deprioritization of M&E: Lost Evidence, Lost Learning, Wasted Capacity, and Looming Implementation Errors

Aid is being cut. At the same time, monitoring and evaluation is being pushed down the priority list. The result is a multiple burden: fewer resources to deliver interventions, less ability to know what those resources achieved, wasted M&E capacity, and a looming cycle of costly mistakes because we lack the knowledge to streamline future projects.

Part of the problem is that donors are no longer demanding M&E as part of reporting on the limited funds that remain. When M&E is not a reporting requirement, it is the first thing implementers drop to protect service delivery. Without that demand, there is little incentive to keep systems running or to show results.

Our Loses:

• Knowing impact: Without M&E, we cannot show whether programs improved health outcomes, reached the right people, or delivered value for money.
• Learning from challenges and successes: Evaluations and learning reviews are postponed or cancelled. What worked is not scaled, and what failed is repeated.
• Capacities built, then wasted: Years of investment in trained M&E officers, data systems, and local expertise are lost when positions end and platforms are left unsupported.
• Less data does not mean fewer problems. It means problems we cannot see, and progress we cannot prove.

What we can do:

• Donors: Keep M&E as a required part of reporting, even when funds are limited, and ring-fence a small share of budgets for it
• Implementers: Keep a minimum core set of indicators running
• Governments: Integrate M&E into routine information systems
• All of us: Retain and build local capacity so systems outlast donor cycles, and document lessons before programs close
• Limited funds make evidence more important, not less. Cutting aid reduces what we can deliver. Dropping M&E from reporting reduces what we can learn, prove, and sustain. We cannot afford to lose both.

Shrinking humanitarian and development funding is putting increasing pressure on evaluation offices, which are expected to deliver more with fewer resources. But I also see an opportunity here: to rethink how we conduct evaluations and make better use of the evidence we already have.

In our joint blog, Doing More with Less: AI for Humanitarian, Environmental & Development Evaluation, we explored how AI could help evaluation offices respond to these pressures. For example, AI can support the synthesis of large volumes of documents, help identify evidence gaps, analyse evaluation portfolios and facilitate translation. Used responsibly, it could reduce time spent on some analytical tasks and allow evaluators to focus more on interpreting findings, understanding context and exercising professional judgement.

There is also an opportunity to look beyond efficiency gains in individual evaluations. Better use of existing evidence could help evaluation offices identify where new evaluations are most needed and avoid duplicating work where sufficient evidence already exists.

Of course, doing more with less cannot come at the expense of evaluation quality, independence or inclusiveness. AI-generated outputs need to be validated, and appropriate safeguards must be in place. Ultimately, the question is not simply whether we can produce evaluations faster or at lower cost, but whether we can use our resources more strategically to generate credible evidence that informs decisions and strengthens accountability and learning.

Funding constraints now pose a major challenge for humanitarian and development organisations, particularly in contexts where people’s needs continue to grow.

On the ground, reduced resources can lead to less frequent assessments, less in-depth data collection and difficulties in ensuring regular monitoring of beneficiaries and the outcomes of interventions. However, in the fields of food security, climate resilience, agroecology and disaster management, reliable data is essential for guiding decisions and ensuring that available resources genuinely meet the needs of communities.

In my view, the solution does not lie in eliminating or weakening evaluation functions, but in promoting approaches that are more strategic, participatory and tailored to the resources available. This involves, in particular, strengthening local capacities, using accessible digital tools for data collection and analysis, pooling resources between organisations, and integrating monitoring, evaluation and learning right from the project design stage.

It is also essential to prioritise relevant indicators, to value communities’ knowledge, and to ensure that evaluation findings are actually used to improve interventions.

Ultimately, evaluation should not be viewed as an additional cost, but as a strategic investment that improves programme effectiveness, accountability to communities and the sustainable impact of actions, even in times of financial constraints.

In my experience working in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) across health and development programmes, funding constraints rarely eliminate the need for evidence. Instead, they often change how organisations generate and use it.

One of the most noticeable effects is the growing emphasis on accountability over learning. When resources are limited, organizations understandably prioritize donor reporting and compliance requirements. While these functions are important, learning activities such as reflection sessions, outcome assessments and evaluations are often postponed or scaled back. As a result, organizations may become better at reporting results than at understanding why those results were achieved and how performance can be improved.

Beyond learning, funding constraints can also affect accountability. When resources for evaluation and reflection are reduced, organizations may have fewer opportunities to systematically assess whether programmes are meeting the needs and priorities of the communities they aim to serve.

Funding constraints can also reduce the scope of evaluation. In many cases, organizations rely more heavily on routine monitoring data and conduct fewer in-depth studies. While this may provide sufficient information for reporting purposes, it can limit deeper insights into effectiveness, sustainability and unintended outcomes.

At the same time, financial pressure can create an opportunity to rethink evaluation practice. Rather than collecting more data, organizations are often compelled to make better use of existing information. This can encourage more focused evaluations, stronger integration of learning into routine management processes and greater attention to evidence that directly informs decisions.

In my view, the greatest risk is not conducting fewer evaluations. It is losing the space for reflection and learning that enables organizations to adapt. In resource-constrained environments, evidence becomes more valuable, not less, because decisions about priorities, investments and programme design carry even greater consequences.