Incorporating Local Lessons
We use monitoring, evaluation, and learning; and collaborating, learning, and adapting to understand what works and then apply it.
LINC uses evidence-based monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) and collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) to help our partners and clients monitor the performance of programs, evaluate their impact and results, and learn, adapt, and design new programs.
LINC’s complexity-aware MEL approach works to capture locally relevant learning, applying tools and methods that are accessible, transferable, and result in a positive impact over time. Feedback loops anchor LINC’s adaptive approach, enabling ongoing improvement through a continuous cycle of listening, collaborating, discovery, learning, and adapting.
LINC’s monitoring, evaluation and learning methodology has supported donors and project implementers to measure, communicate, learn, and improve their results for individual projects, across a portfolio, and system-wide:
Collaboration and Learning, System Wide. LINC facilitates pause and reflect cycles, after action reviews, and communities of practice; produces synthesis briefs and evidence gap analyses; and maintains knowledge repositories so insights are easily put into action. In Ghana, LINC convened communities of practice for a variety of NGOs and their project staff to learn from one another and find opportunities for collective action. After a series of evaluations and other studies on youth programming in Jamaica, LINC facilitated practical learning workshops to ensure the findings and recommendations generated were accessible, actionable, and supportive to evidence-based planning and improvement.
End-to-End Build and Operate. LINC has supported institutional donors and their grantees with start-to-finish implementation of their monitoring and learning systems, including theories of change, indicator frameworks, data pipelines, data quality checks, and visualization dashboards. In Mexico, for example, we developed a targeted portfolio-wide monitoring database with a flexible dashboard to aggregate and visualize data across over 30 projects, giving leadership a clean view of progress and trends. We developed customized training courses for grantees to apply effective data management practices to feed into the database and for donor staff to interact with the database and data visualization dashboards in Tableau.
Systems Thinking, Applied. LINC has supported partners to integrate complexity-aware methods and tools into their monitoring and learning systems. In Kenya, we supported the complexity aware monitoring and learning for the Inclusive Futures employment program led by an international NGO in partnership with local organizations and two large Kenyan beverage companies. LINC facilitated the use of social network analysis and causal loop diagramming to understand the context for inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor force, identify learning needs, support monitoring and adaptation, and facilitate participatory stakeholder
engagement in learning and adaptive management.
Capacity Transfer and Localization. LINC has developed, distributed, and delivered resource materials, toolkits, and training courses on theory of change development, performance indicator frameworks, data management, data analysis, learning, and adaptive management for national and local NGOs in a variety of countries. In Zambia, we identified networks of host country research and evaluation firms and provided coaching and training to strengthen their technical and organizational capacity, help them communicate their work, and support them as they began to conduct monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities. We also created a learning community for alumni to continue sharing their knowledge and support one another.
Utilization of Data and Results. LINC builds in “last mile” steps so knowledge generation translates into decisions. For the Vietnam Plastic Reduction project, we facilitated discussion of data and analysis with participant organizations to capture joint actions (e.g., targeted behavior change efforts and coordination with recyclers) in follow up plans owned by local partners. In the Tanzania Data Ecosystem development project, LINC applied outcome harvesting to surface concrete instances of data use, which the donor used to refine
investment choices.
Measuring Results Across Global Initiatives. LINC has assessed multi-country portfolios and helped translate findings for decision makers. Our review of the Global Health Supply Chain (GHSC) project collected and analyzed data to identify cross-country bottlenecks and potential improvements for reliable commodity delivery. For LASER PULSE, a global project to support university researchers, LINC analyzed research-to-use pathways across regions to strengthen support to low- and middle-income country investigators.
Portfolio Backbones at Scale. LINC has served as the monitoring, evaluation, collaboration, learning, and adapting backbone for institutional donor portfolios ranging up to whole country portfolios valued at over $1 billion. In Ethiopia’s Resilience Learning Activity, for example, we convened 150+ resilience stakeholders, established a common measurement framework, and migrated hundreds of users to a shared knowledge portal that turned scattered reports into decision ready evidence.
Our Methodology: A Better Way to Monitor and Learn
We help donors and project implementers to set up MEL systems that are robust and easy-to-operate.
Five Pillars of our MEL System Development Tool
Donors, NGOs, and other mission-driven organizations seek to design projects and deliver services that create meaningful and sustained impact. They must align diverse initiatives behind a coherent strategy. They are also expected to identify opportunities for innovation and improvement, learn from their past failures and successes, adapt to the ever-changing context they work in, make evidence-based decisions, and communicate their results. To meet these challenges and excel in achieving their goals, teams need a robust monitoring and learning system.
At LINC, we believe monitoring and learning systems should be purposeful, lightweight, and actionable.
LINC’s monitoring and learning tools support every stage of our five component methodology to design and deliver a robust system for monitoring, learning, and adaptive management.
A Leader in CLA
LINC was a winner in USAID’s CLA Case Competition in 2023 and a finalist in 2024. Learn more about our recognized CLA cases:
USAID’s CLA Case Competition Winner
USAID/Mexico and LINC’s case is one of the winners of USAID’s 2023 CLA Case Competition. The activities showcased in the case are conducted under the MESA Activity.
The USAID/Mexico and LINC case, USAID/Mexico Unlocks the Door for More Innovative MEL Approaches, showcases how the Mission’s Program Office and the MESA team worked to design a novel process for updating and disseminating the Mission’s Performance Management Plan (PMP), and to effectively engage Mission staff in its design and use, reflecting two CLA sub-components: “M&E for Learning” and “Continuous Learning & Improvement”.
USAID’s CLA Case Competition Finalist
LINC, ECOSS, and Gerry Roxas Foundation’s case is one of the finalists in the 2024 USAID CLA Case Competition.
The case, Creating a Community of Local Systems Practitioners to Address Local Development Challenges Using Systems Thinking, focuses on the Communities of Practice for Effective Partnerships (COPE) Activity and showcases how COPE incentivizes participation with “learning while doing” through demonstration projects, providing $55,000 to each eligible organization to address a local development challenge using systems thinking. Recognizing that training and funding alone wouldn’t build a community, COPE emphasized intentional engagement to be a ‘member’.
Learn more about our CLA case.
The Ethiopia Resilience Learning Activity helps USAID and partners to better understand what relief and development interventions can help make households, communities, and systems more resilient.
