Question #5: Where is support from USAID or development practitioners most impactful?
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Laura Courbois, MarketShare Associates (MSA)
Jun 23, 2023, 8:43:20 AM6/23/23
to Advancing Women's Empowerment Virtual Learning Series
This is a question for everyone to respond to, including experts and participants:
Where is collaboration from USAID and/or development practitioners most impactful to support the private sector in collecting and applying social inclusion and women’s empowerment data?
Looking forward to the conversation!
Where is collaboration from USAID and/or development practitioners most impactful to support the private sector in collecting and applying social inclusion and women’s empowerment data?
Looking forward to the conversation!
Yaquta Fatehi, William Davidson Institute
Jun 23, 2023, 12:29:26 PM6/23/23
to Advancing Women's Empowerment Virtual Learning Series, Laura Courbois, MarketShare Associates (MSA)
Hello Laura and Kelly- Thanks for organizing this series and ending with a terrific question!
1. Funders and other development practitioners' willingness to co-create measurement methodologies with the companies and key stakeholders have been significant. I saw this on G-SEARCh and also when our BalanceD-MERL consortium participated in the USAID and Gap Inc., Women + Water GDA. Co-creation with the project design and implementation teams is essential to ensure the measurement plan is efficient and effective and meets both the funder's and company's social inclusion and women empowerment monitoring and use goals. It is also essential for CLA (USAID) / continuous improvement and lean process development.
2. Funders and development practitioners using a common language with the private sector, as we witnessed on the G-SEARCh project and others reduce miscommunication and improve workflows. Companies, impact investors, enterprise support orgs, and business consultants use a different vocabulary and are not just unaware of development/evaluation jargon but also wary of it. Common language is also critical when translating findings into insights for company leadership so that they can effectively use the evidence in decision-making and operations improvement. Another point where this comes in handy is in deliverable production and dissemination. I've found that funders are now more open to final measurement writeups designed to the private sector's preferences, such as case studies, shorter reports, and executive summaries with key findings and the call to action listed on the first page itself.
3. I've also seen a lot of focus on bringing measurement specialists to build measurement capabilities within company staff and leadership (versus just helicoptering in the external evaluator to conduct the monitoring and evaluation). This is critical for measurement to be sustainable within companies. We discussed this with our funders on G-SEARCh, and recently, I incorporated qualitative and quantitative gendered analysis skills-building into a proposal to a foundation (this also reduces the cost of bringing on the external evaluator) -- so this activity will be part of the scope of work instead of an afterthought. Funders supporting the building of measurement skills are key enablers to sustainable measurement practices, the use of evidence in decision-making, and measurement that focuses on outcomes and continuous improvement.
These are top-of-mind —looking forward to hearing from others!
Thanks again,
Yaquta
1. Funders and other development practitioners' willingness to co-create measurement methodologies with the companies and key stakeholders have been significant. I saw this on G-SEARCh and also when our BalanceD-MERL consortium participated in the USAID and Gap Inc., Women + Water GDA. Co-creation with the project design and implementation teams is essential to ensure the measurement plan is efficient and effective and meets both the funder's and company's social inclusion and women empowerment monitoring and use goals. It is also essential for CLA (USAID) / continuous improvement and lean process development.
2. Funders and development practitioners using a common language with the private sector, as we witnessed on the G-SEARCh project and others reduce miscommunication and improve workflows. Companies, impact investors, enterprise support orgs, and business consultants use a different vocabulary and are not just unaware of development/evaluation jargon but also wary of it. Common language is also critical when translating findings into insights for company leadership so that they can effectively use the evidence in decision-making and operations improvement. Another point where this comes in handy is in deliverable production and dissemination. I've found that funders are now more open to final measurement writeups designed to the private sector's preferences, such as case studies, shorter reports, and executive summaries with key findings and the call to action listed on the first page itself.
3. I've also seen a lot of focus on bringing measurement specialists to build measurement capabilities within company staff and leadership (versus just helicoptering in the external evaluator to conduct the monitoring and evaluation). This is critical for measurement to be sustainable within companies. We discussed this with our funders on G-SEARCh, and recently, I incorporated qualitative and quantitative gendered analysis skills-building into a proposal to a foundation (this also reduces the cost of bringing on the external evaluator) -- so this activity will be part of the scope of work instead of an afterthought. Funders supporting the building of measurement skills are key enablers to sustainable measurement practices, the use of evidence in decision-making, and measurement that focuses on outcomes and continuous improvement.
These are top-of-mind —looking forward to hearing from others!
Thanks again,
Yaquta
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