When ImpactMapper started 11 years ago, our consulting work was primarily a single service: developing impact metrics and designing and implementing evaluations. However, as time passed, our donor and nonprofit clients’ needs grew.

It wasn’t long until we were asked by many of our clients if we could offer Theory of Change, impact framework, and/or impact report development, in addition to advisory or coaching work to support their monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) staff (and sometimes even grantees). These requests started us on the journey of engaging in multi-year MEL partnerships.

Our multi-lingual ImpactMapper consulting team has decades of experience working with donors, nonprofits, and corporations across a wide set of thematic issues from education, gender equality, environmental justice, climate, democracy and civic action, peacebuilding, movement building, academia, arts and culture, and more. In 2021 and 2022, we launched MEL partnerships with Malala Fund and BEA Fund supporting their Theory of Change and impact reporting development in a participatory way. For both organizations, we also produced annual reports for multiple years relieving the task from being solely on the staff and offering an outside perspective and analysis. We launched a three and half year MEL partnership with Porticus in 2022, engaging in similar activities as well, and also led a five month MEL capacity building program for grantee partners and led a mid-term and final evaluation of the portfolio’s first phase of the grantmaking. We have also been an ongoing MEL advisory support to Fondation Chanel since 2024. These are a few of our multi-year clients over the years; you can read more about our MEL partnerships and other case studies here.

The close connection and alignment our team has with the inner workings and needs of the organizations we support has been energizing and enriching. We customize our partnerships on an annual basis and often pair the consulting and training work with our custom software to optimize the MEL process even further.  We are there to support staff however they need as they change over time and we share the MEL work until the team is ready to take on the work internally.  This deep institutional knowledge leads to more efficient and effective support, deeper relationships of trust, as well as a lot of fun between our teams!

Some elements that we have embedded in our MEL partnerships include:

• Theory of change, impact framework and metrics development
• Qualitative data analysis, financial data analysis, quantitative data analysis, cost effectiveness and ROI analysis
• Coding your grantee or partner reports in alignment with TOC or Strategic Plan
• Developing reporting tools for research and survey tool and implementation
• Research, evaluations, evidence synthesis, knowledge briefs, learning products, case studies, etc.
• Dashboard creation and visualizations for your staff, community, or board
• Developing learning processes and moments for your organization
• Workshop development and facilitating across diverse groups
• Implementing and training in inclusive and participatory methodologies
• Trainings and donor and nonprofit capacity building in evidence-based storytelling
• Expertise in curriculum development for trainings and developing how-to guides for diverse stakeholders, and
• Software for impact tracking and data visualization.

As we look ahead to the next few months, we want to know:

• How much MEL capacity does your team currently have?
• And, how differently would your work be if you had a MEL partner like ImpactMapper?

If your organization is undergoing a strategy refresh process or is looking to receive external guidance to strengthen your MEL systems, our team can be your ally.

Book a free discovery call with our team today to chat more with us here.