• International Development
• Governance & Economic Development
• International Education
• International Environmental Services
• Global Health
• Information & Communication Technology
• Monitoring & Evaluation

Contacts

• Gordon Cressman
  919-541-6363

Monitoring and Evaluation

Our monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems support and enhance development results and impact from our international programs. Strong, effective M&E systems contribute accurate, timely, and relevant information to inform decisions throughout the life of a project.

Most international donors require M&E on all development projects. To provide useful and cost-effective support, the correct strategy, technical standards, and resources must be built into program M&E design beginning in the earliest proposal stages. The best M&E and evaluation designs are practical, cost-effective, and locally sustainable.

Each system:

• Responds to specific donor requirements per project
• Meets internal and stakeholders' needs for results and impact information
• Draws on state-of-the-art M&E expertise and field experience
• Encourages and contributes to project, sectoral, and development learning

Results measurement and impact evaluation thus contribute vital lessons that support evidence-based learning for improved development impacts over time and across contexts. Applying the most relevant M&E tools and systems mitigates project risks by ensuring we have timely, valid, and reliable information to inform strategy and improve practices. Managers and stakeholders can use M&E information collaboratively to understand and correct problems and amplify successes—early and often—which helps maximize any intervention's sustainable development impact. Correctly tailored M&E systems help projects invest scarce resources efficiently. Programs can build meaningful evaluations most efficiently on solid M&E findings through the life of the project.

Results Measurement and Evaluation Approach

Quality M&E data provide the best objective evidence of incremental and overall progress toward results, enabling leadership teams to shape implementation toward the most constructive impacts. We enhance M&E efficiency and cost-effectiveness through multiple strategies, not only to meet reporting needs but most importantly to support informed decisions that allocate resources effectively and efficiently, enhance direct and sustainable impact, and build the international knowledge base toward improved development efforts around the world.

We comply with contractual and impact-oriented donor expectations, while also taking the opportunity to lead globally in promoting coherent, consistent M&E standards in our international work. Leadership in this realm strengthens project design, implementation, continuous quality improvement, and scientific stature through increasingly proven project methods, results, and impact.

M&E Experts and Expertise

Our core M&E/evaluation unit engages across RTI providing support and also leads projects using strategies that integrate results measurement and impact evaluation techniques proven through field experience, grounded in local knowledge, and informed by state-of-the-art approaches. Professional initiatives promote M&E systems and evaluation designs tailored to operating environments so that they are collaborative, participatory, appropriate for stakeholder needs, and effective for donor purposes.

Our M&E/evaluation experts provide short- and long-term technical assistance, strategic support and leadership, pragmatic and cost-effective information management approaches (from paper-based to high-tech solutions), and expertise to strengthen results achieved through programs and projects around the world. Senior M&E experts also provide external consulting services to develop or strengthen project or institutional M&E systems for other organizations. M&E/evaluation experts support successful international development activities by leading or building project team capacities to

• Identify and shape consensus around concrete goals and key results to be measured
• Determine valid measurements or indicators, reliable data and sources, and correct calculations
• Collect, process, store, and use appropriate data using sustainable tools and techniques
• Assess and improve data quality
• Interpret information accurately for best use in reporting, making decisions, and improving impact

Highlights of recent in-country M&E experience include work in Afghanistan, Benin, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guinea, Guyana, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Liberia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Uganda, the United States & Puerto Rico, the West Bank, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (plus M&E leadership on multiple global projects).

Experts on our M&E team apply proven strategic practices, methods, and tools across all RTI international development program areas: conflict management, mitigation, and reconstruction; local governance; economic growth; education; water and the environment; health; and information and communication technology. Clients funding projects include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, several agencies of the United Nations, philanthropic foundations, other regional and international organizations, and private sector corporations.