Theories of change & impact measurement (March 2021)
GFMD's role as a technical partner in PRIMED includes convening donors, media development practitioners and researchers.
On March 15th GFMD IMPACT brought together over 80 donors and funders, journalism support and media development practitioners and researchers to address some of the biggest questions facing our sector:
- How do we design programmes that have a real impact?
- And how should we measure impact?
- How do we ensure evidence and research is gathered and shared so that it is genuinely useful for our sector?
The meeting was co-convened by GFMD the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA).
As one of the meeting’s participants noted:
“We really need to share knowledge and learning about what works and what doesn't and to catalogue that knowledge so that we can get better results and be able to articulate those results.”
The meeting heard three case studies where donors, academics, and practitioners spoke about their collaborative approaches to learning, evaluation, and the effectiveness of their work.
Based on a study examining the use and perceptions of theories of change and result chains by donors and media assistance groups, the meeting discussed how to refine and improve how they are conceived and operationalised.
Looking at how a consortium of partners and multiple country teams can effectively develop learning questions and knowledge sharing mechanisms, and how this has been incentivised by the programme’s structure and metrics for success.