Building M&E practices: A case study of NOAH

Neighbourhood Old Age Home’s (NOAH) entry into the MTN Awards for Social Change set the organisation on the journey to improving their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices. The organisation’s evolution from its first entry to the competition in 2019, to becoming a winner in 2022, demonstrates the transformative value that better M&E can have on non-profit organisations (NPOs), regardless of their size.

NOAH, a Western Cape-based NPO, provides safe, affordable housing to the elderly poor through a holistic model of support. Operating in six communities in greater Cape Town, the organisation focuses on six areas of support: home, health, happiness, social enterprise development, sustainability and organisational development.

It currently works to meet the basic needs of over 730 social pensioners. The organisation has twelve communal houses across Cape Town and two community centres that provide psycho-social support and community-based care through two NOAH clinics in Woodstock and Khayelitsha.

NOAH entered the MTN Awards for Social Change for the first time in 2019, the year the project was launched. The awards, a partnership between the MTN Foundation and responsible business advisory Trialogue, had been developed to encourage and reward good M&E practice in the non- profit sector.

Competition recognition and progress

NOAH’s first entry saw the organisation being shortlisted as a potential prize winner. The judges’ feedback on the entry was that, although NOAH had a generally well-designed programme logic with clear activities, outputs and outcomes, it was still in the beginning phase of its M&E journey.

The judges recommended that NOAH strengthen its M&E practice by improving its theory of change to reflect the quality and broader impact of the organisation’s work. This would extend beyond monitoring just the access to services it provided, but also reflecting on the impact of the organisation’s work in the communities in which its beneficiaries live.

NOAH’s 2021 entry fared less well than in 2019. The judges assessed that while their logical framework was comprehensive, the flow of outputs to outcomes could be made clearer. The entry was clouded by some confusion between outputs and outcomes, and between outcomes and impact

NOAH’s M&E progress delivers the winning formula

In 2022, the final year of the awards, NOAH was awarded the best medium category winner.

The organisation’s application evidenced a unique M&E model that focused on a holistic approach to its work and showed an improved implementation of their M&E framework.

NOAH had been able to successfully identify the methodologies that best suited the organisation’s unique approach by drawing on management data from its M&E system to improve the way in which it ran programmes. The organisation’s logic framework had been practically applied to ensure the organisation’s improved adaptability and responsiveness . Instead of focusing solely on delivery outputs, NOAH had directed its attention to the results that its efforts had achieved.

How the competition has affected NOAH

The path that NOAH followed as an organisation from being shortlisted in 2019, to winning in 2022, demonstrated an intentional and reflective use of M&E as a management practice.

NOAH director Anne Dobson noted that completing the competition application had helped to acknowledge gaps and “brought about a determination to do better”. Gap analysis facilitated the following significant shifts for the organisation:

• NOAH recognised their need for an M&E function. In 2020, NOAH was able to use unattached donor funding to hire an M&E consultant to work with the programme managers.
• The organisation moved from inconsistent and ad hoc monitoring across programmes to streamlined data collection processes, embedding data into overall management processes. Now, major focus areas have programme plans based on their logic framework model, monitoring and reporting is conducted monthly where the outcomes are evaluated against their targets.
• Formal evaluation learnings are incorporated into planning processes.
• Monitoring data informs strategic planning, with M&E integral to organisational development, rather than an add-on.
• The organisation has an increased internal awareness of the value of good M&E practices.
• The organisation has created an enabling environment for M&E.

Dobson noted how the practical and meaningful integration of data into the work of the organisation contributed to shifting NOAH’s organisational culture.

This was illustrated in the experience of the organisation’s health manager and the running of a diabetes support group. Initially resistant to M&E as an additional administrative burden of data collection and monitoring, the health manager reluctantly started collecting health data. The data was used to inform and actively manage a diabetes support group where individuals came up with their own ways of managing the disease. Over time, the group effectively supported each other in the management of their diabetes, and the group’s health outcomes started to improve. As the data began to demonstrate the improvement, the health manager was overhead to exclaim, “I finally get M&E!”

How NOAH used the prize money

NOAH invested the entire R300 00 prize in M&E. The organisation used the money to retain an M&E consultant and to run a number of surveys. Dobson said this meant the organisation was able to “tighten up what we were looking for, and really focus on what was relevant”. It also facilitated bringing beneficiaries voices more directly into the monitoring process.

Dobson acknowledged the role that the competition played in shifting the organisation to stronger M&E practices, noting that NOAH “probably would have taken much longer to get to where we are now without the competition”.

Read https://bit.ly/mtnawardforsocialchange  for more information about the MTN Awards for Social Change.