A formal proposal for Monitoring & Evaluation System for an organization should contain at least the following headings:
Process Monitoring:
This section should cover how the monitoring of the project activities and interventions will be carried out, What steps will be carried out and how to ensure full process monitoring? The following dummy content can be used in this section. The content below does not cover all the aspects of Process monitoring but is just to give you an idea on what should this section look like:
"Keeping in view the requirements of the management and the donor for process monitoring, tools like Questionnaires, surveys, forms, interviews etc must be developed to monitor the process, approaches adopted, implementation strategies followed and timeliness of the project interventions. These tools will capture key findings from the field; document views of the implementing staff, and outline debriefing sessions which took place between the monitoring staff the implementing staff for areas of improvement. It will also be used to follow up on the actions agreed by the implementing staff. Process monitoring will be done by a team of trained M&E staff. They will conduct agreed number of field visits in a specified duration, and those reports will be entered into MIS. The reports will be categorized based on the findings, and at the same time various analysis will be produced. The quantitative and quality analysis will be presented in a report."
Progress monitoring and validation:
The next important topic that should be the main part of the proposal for a Monitoring & Evaluation System of an organization should be the "Progress Monitoring & Validation".
There comes a time when the donor wants you to monitor each and every step of a project activity. They want you to monitor the process, the progress and even validate already passed activities. Validation can also be usefull when there are so many activities running simultaneously and the monitoring personnel are less in number to reach and monitor each activity. Thus personnel can go afterwards and validate the project activity/intervention. This is the section where you should define how must the progress of the activities be monitored and how must the validation be performed.
Below is an excerpt to show what the above topic should include in M&E Proposal:
"Progress tracking is one of the key components of any M&E system. In order to track progress, all agreed outputs will be outlined and the target will be set for the indicators. The indicators will be tracked after agreed timelines using an Output Matrix. The output matrix will let management and the donor know about the progress of each of the outputs. The M&E team will verify and validate the output reported by taking a sample from each of the progress reported. Verification will be done by assessing: Means of verification; physical verification of the activities in the field; process adopted and, the timeliness of the activities."
Performance Assessment:
Every project is designed to bring some change in the target area. The measurement of that change is called performance assessement. This change is measured by quantifying the "change" in terms of variables called "Indicators". This section of the proposal should cover how indicators (already defined in project documents) will be used to develop tools and techniques to carry out the performance assessement. The performance assessment section of a M&E Proposal can be written as below:
"In order to assess performance indicators, baseline needs to be conducted. Once baseline is established for those indicators, M&E plan needs to be developed. The M&E plan will clearly define definition of each variable followed by desegregation of data and the unit of analysis. Target will be set for each of the indicators and, methods and sources of data will be clarified. In order to track performance indicators, periodic assessment will be conducted. Analysis will be inserted in Indicator Tracking Table and variation will be measured."
Data Flow Diagrams:
The next thing that the proposal should define is the data flow path. This section should include through which means data will be collected, who will collect the data, how and to whom will it be transferred. The section should also define what happens to the data at each step.
A sample of content to be added in this section is given below:
"Proper data flow diagram will be developed based on the data collection tools. Responsibilities will be assigned and timelines will be set. The monitoring team will follow the same Data Flow Diagrams and will conduct monitoring visits using the agreed frequency of visits for each of the process, progress and performance monitoring."
Management Information System (MIS)
Evaluations:
The organization to whom the proposl is being drafted may require to conduct evaluation of its projects. The proposal should also define the methodology required for the organization to perform the evaluation.
"ToRs will be drafted for all required evaluations. Those ToRs will focus on scope of the evaluation, type of evaluations, methodology, type of skills required from the evaluation team and, template for the evaluation report. The M&E team will be trained on managing and conducting evaluation for projects."
Reporting:
The M&E staff will be reporting their findings to higher authorities. The proposal should consider adding a format (template) for the regular reports. The tone of this section can be as below, for example:
"A proper reporting template will be developed which will be used to capture findings from the field monitoring, reporting on the progress against the output indicators; status of performance indicators, and finally validation and verification of the outputs. The report will outline key shortcomings in the implementation and performance and the challenges faced by the implementing staff. The report will cater needs of both the management as well as information require for the quarterly/annual reports submitted to the Foundation."
Duration and Cost required for the consultancy
In this section briefly outline the time required and the cost of this whole consultancy.
The total duration of the Consultancy will be 30 working days. The consultancy will be lead by "Name" who has developed similar system for various organizations. Please see the attached resume. Lump sum amount for the Consultancy is 10,000 USD.
Detailed Resume of the Consultant
Attach a detailed resume of yourself clearly showing the relevant experience that you have and if you have developed similar systems before.
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