Make a monitoring plan
A monitoring plan describes the following things:
Implementation: What activities will take place, for whom are they relevant, and when?
Results:
What results (outputs, outcomes, and impact) will occur, for whom, and when (on the short, medium, and long term)?
What indicators will you be using to measure and monitor your results?
Data collection: What methods will you use?
What are indicators?
Indicators are pieces of evidence that tell you whether and to what extent results occur. You set indicators for each desired result in order to measure the effect. In formulating indicators a few things are important:
A. Level and form
An indicator can be objective (measuring facts) or subjective (measuring experience), and it can focus on the micro level (direct change for the target audience or stakeholders) or macro level (societal change). For the effect ‘Improved health for the target audience’ you could, for example, use the following indicators.
number of doctor’s visits (objective, micro level)
how the target audience assesses their fitness (subjective, micro level)
change in life expectancy for the region (objective, macro level)
B. SMART
Make indicators SMART: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Relevant and Time-bound. The indicator 'number of doctor's visits' then becomes, for example: 'Number of times young people between the age of 12 and 15 have visited their doctor in the last 12 months'.
A good test for relevance is the "Do-you-believe-it" test: Does the indicator really say anything about the outcome?
C. Self-developed versus existing indicators
Are you going to develop your own indicators or can you use existing, validated indicators and scales? The advantage is that such scales have already proven their usefulness and they allow you to compare your results with organizations that use the same scales (see examples in the 'Overview of validated scales').
How do you draft a monitoring plan?
Prioritize outcomes: What will and will not be monitored? What evidence already exists about the occurrence of certain outcomes (you may not need to monitor those)? Which outcomes are most important for the organization, the target group and/or stakeholders or for (potential) funders?
Link indicators to each of the results you want to monitor, for example:
Implementation and scope: Are activities going according to plan? Do you reach the right people? (More information in Monitoring and Evaluation, chapter 1)
Outcome and impact: Do the intended effects occur?
Context and attribution (more information in Monitoring and Evaluation, chapter 3)
Determine the method(s) of data collection for each indicator (more information in Monitoring and evaluation, chapter 2).
Make a planning: At what moments is data collected, analyzed, reported and - if relevant - translated into actions for improvement?
Monitoring plan and the CBF Accreditation policy
The CBF requires that organizations in all of its assessment categories motivate and record in their multi-annual plan the improvement they hope to achieve for their target audience or issue.
For organizations in the assessment categories B and C (for organizations with a total income of 500,000 euros or more), this is a strict standard.
