Evaluating Program Impact: Our Approach to Performance Assessment

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to fulfilling the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's (RBF) mission as well as our commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. The Fund's board and staff have found that engaging policymakers on the results and insights gained from our grantmaking, informing the public about our grantees' work, and attracting additional donors to promising institutions and approaches are key activities that help build a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.In order to bring additional rigor to the Fund's approach to program impact assessment, a committee of RBF trustees and staff was established in March 2012. Based on our experience, the state of evaluation in philanthropy, and a review of literature and activity in the field, the Impact Assessment Committee developed a set of principles to guide our impact assessment approach, defined terms for the purposes of RBF discussions, established several points for evaluation activities in the life cycle of a grantmaking program, and identified opportunities to embed impact assessment in the Fund's regular institutional processes. The Fund establishes its programs in fields and places that reflect its mission and the evolution of its longstanding interests, along with an analysis of the changing global context. The key elements of the RBF's approach to assessing program impact are as follows:* The board approves program guidelines that lay the foundation for the Fund's grantmaking within a program. Guidelines include a preamble that presents the vision and rationale for each program, ambitious long-term goals, and strategies that articulate specific actions the Fund will support to achieve progress toward these goals. They provide guidance to staff and grantseekers about what the RBF is prepared to fund.* A program framework summary, derived from the guidelines, is developed for internal use and includes indicators of progress. These indicators identify anticipated changes in understanding, behavior, capacity, public engagement, or public policy that would demonstrate that program strategies are contributing to realizing program goals.* Within each program, evaluation activities occur on an ongoing basis. Monitoring of the field and of individual grants draws on regular staff engagement and grantee reporting; program reviews, conducted every three to five years by program staff, provide an opportunity to engage the board in a strategic review of progress—often resulting in updated program strategies; impact assessments are conducted by external consultants after five or more years as strategies mature.* The annual institutional calendar provides a variety of opportunities for the board and staff to discuss and review programmatic impact at different points each year and across several years.This approach to impact assessment reflects emerging practices in the field and is consistent with the Fund's values and grantmaking approaches. The committee believes that the approach effectively supports program learning, guides program development, and enhances the impact of the Fund's grantmaking

New Tasks in Old Jobs: Drivers of Change and Implications for Job Quality

This overview report summarises the findings of 20 case studies looking at recent changes in the task content of five manufacturing occupations (car assemblers, meat processing workers, hand-packers, chemical products plant and machine operators and inspection engineers) as a result of factors such as digital transformations, globalisation and offshoring, increasing demand for high quality standards and sustainability. It also discusses some implications in terms of job quality and working life. The study reveals that the importance of physical tasks in manufacturing is generally declining due to automation; that more intensive use of digitally controlled equipment, together with increasing importance of quality standards, involve instead a growing amount of intellectual tasks for manual industrial workers; and that the amount of routine task content is still high in the four manual occupations studied. Overall, the report highlights how qualitative contextual information can complement existing quantitative data, offering a richer understanding of changes in the content and nature of jobs

Contamination

Soil contamination occurs when substances are added to soil, resulting in increases in concentrations above background or reference levels. Pollution may follow from contamination when contaminants are present in amounts that are detrimental to soil quality and become harmful to the environment or human health. Contamination can occur via a range of pathways including direct application to land and indirect application from atmospheric deposition. Contamination was identified by SEPA (2001) as a significant threat to soil quality in many parts of Scotland. Towers et al. (2006) identified four principal contamination threats to Scottish soils: acidification; eutrophication; metals; and pesticides. The Scottish Soil Framework (Scottish Government, 2009) set out the potential impact of these threats on the principal soil functions. Severe contamination can lead to “contaminated land” [as defined under Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act (1990)]. This report does not consider the state and impacts of contaminated land on the wider environment in detail. For further information on contaminated land, see ‘Dealing with Land Contamination in Scotland’ (SEPA, 2009). This chapter considers the causes of soil contamination and their environmental and socio-economic impacts before going on to discuss the status of, and trends in, levels of contaminants in Scotland’s soils

Emerging Opportunities: Monitoring and Evaluation in a Tech-Enabled World

Various trends are impacting on the field of monitoring and evaluation in the area of international development. Resources have become ever more scarce while expectations for what development assistance should achieve are growing. The search for more efficient systems to measure impact is on. Country governments are also working to improve their own capacities for evaluation, and demand is rising from national and community-based organizations for meaningful participation in the evaluation process as well as for greater voice and more accountability from both aid and development agencies and government.These factors, in addition to greater competition for limited resources in the area of international development, are pushing donors, program participants and evaluators themselves to seek more rigorous – and at the same time flexible – systems to monitor and evaluate development and humanitarian interventions.However, many current approaches to M&E are unable to address the changing structure of development assistance and the increasingly complex environment in which it operates. Operational challenges (for example, limited time, insufficient resources and poor data quality) as well as methodological challenges that impact on the quality and timeliness of evaluation exercises have yet to be fully overcome

Adaptation of domestic state governance to international governance models

The purpose of the article is to provide the evolving international trends of modern management models and authorial vision of model of state governance system in Ukraine, its subsystems, in particular, the system of provision of administrative services that is appropriate for the contemporary times. Methodology. On the basis of scientific and theoretical approaches to the definitions of terms “state governance” and “public governance”, there was an explanation of considerable difference between them and, taking into consideration, the mentality of Ukrainian society and peculiar weak side in self-organization, the authors offered to form authorial model of governance on the basis of historically traditional for Ukraine model of state governance and to add some elements of management concepts that proved their significance, efficiency and priority in practice. Results. The authors emphasized the following two prevailing modern management models in the international practice: “new state management” and “good governance”. The first concept offered for consideration served as a basis for the semantic content of state activity that reflects more the state of administrative reformation. Practical meaning. A practical introduction of management to the domestic model of governance creates the range of contradictions that do not allow implementing herein concept. Pursuant to authors, the second one allows in considerable measure to reform state governance, considering historically developed peculiarities of this model. Moreover, the involvement of concept herein into introduction of informational and communicational technologies in the process of governance eliminates the necessity of power decentralization, it allows to form real net structure and, at the same, to keep vertical power structure, to involve citizens for formation and taking of management decisions, to form electronic communicational channel of feedback, to provide citizens with electronic administrative services. All indicated advantages of the concept certify about the necessity to reform state governance exactly in this field. Meaning/ Distinction. This article raises a question about the significance of formation and sequence of state policy in Ukraine aimed at creating an information-oriented society, space, as well as informational and technological infrastructure

Situating the Next Generation of Impact Measurement and Evaluation for Impact Investing

In taking stock of the landscape, this paper promotes a convergence of methods, building from both the impact investment and evaluation fields.The commitment of impact investors to strengthen the process of generating evidence for their social returns alongside the evidence for financial returns is a veritable game changer. But social change is a complex business and good intentions do not necessarily translate into verifiable impact.As the public sector, bilaterals, and multilaterals increasingly partner with impact investors in achieving collective impact goals, the need for strong evidence about impact becomes even more compelling. The time has come to develop new mindsets and approaches that can be widely shared and employed in ways that will advance the frontier for impact measurement and evaluation of impact investing. Each of the menu options presented in this paper can contribute to building evidence about impact. The next generation of measurement will be stronger if the full range of options comes into play and the more evaluative approaches become commonplace as means for developing evidence and testing assumptions about the processes of change from a stakeholder perspective– with a view toward context and systems.Creating and sharing evidence about impact is a key lever for contributing to greater impact, demonstrating additionality, and for building confidence among potential investors, partners and observers in this emergent industry on its path to maturation. Further, the range of measurement options offers opportunities to choose appropriate approaches that will allow data to contribute to impact management– to improve on the business model of ventures and to improve services and systems that improve conditions for people and households living in poverty.

Net structure of subject-to-subject relations in the management of the system of administrative services provision

The purpose of the work is to form the net structure of management of the system of administrative services provision on the basis of implementation of subject-to-subject interactions between state sector and civil society. Methodology. The methodology basis for the investigation is the abstract-logical analysis of theoretical and methodological backgrounds for management of relations and interactions. For the theoretical generalization and formation of net structure, there are used scientific recommendations of Ukrainian scientists regarding the necessity to implement subject-to-subject relations in the system of administrative services provision. Results. The investigations allowed confirming that the hierarchical structure of the state governance system does not give an opportunity to implement equal interaction between a subject of provision and a subject of an appeal as these relations have one – way communication and the feedback channel has a formal character. Moreover, the civil society is not considered by state sector to be a source of methods and ways to develop the system of state governance, in particular, the management system of administrative services provision. Practical meaning. The net structure of management will allow implementing the subject-subject relations in the system, under which the actions of the subject of provision – that means state sector – will be directed to the realization of rights and interests of the subjects of appeal. In their turn, apart from the performance of all legislative responsibilities that they should perform, they can carry out activities directed to the development of management activity in the system of administrative services provision and the whole system of state governance as an integral system of management. Meaning/Distinction. The provided model of the net structure will allow involving citizens in the processes of state governance and increasing the impact of the civil sector during the making of state and management decisions and, as a result, to confirm subject-to-subject positions in the relations

PRIMUS/Informed Cities: Making research work for local sustainability

The final report of a three year European Commission FP7 project