Process evaluation and learning study on Breakthrough India’s Organizational Development
Client Name: Azim Premji Foundation (APF)
Location: New Delhi
Background Context: Breakthrough Trust (BT) India works on reducing the acceptance of violence and discrimination against women. Their work aims to empower young people to become gender equality champions and transform their communities into gender-inclusive spaces.
Azim Premji Foundation (APF) awarded a multi-year organization development grant to BT. The grant aimed to enable BT to strengthen its organizational capabilities (fundraising, systems, and staff capacity). The aim of the grant was to enable BT to strengthen organizational capabilities (investment in staff, systems, and fundraising) that would help deepen its work in existing communities and scale to other geographies without compromising on the quality of its interventions.
Objectives
APF commissioned Development Solutions (DS) to undertake a process evaluation to understand the efficacy of organization building and programmatic work undertaken through the grant to BT. The objective of the evaluation was to capture the lessons learned. The process evaluation answered the following questions:
- Is investment in organization building (organization development, fundraising, program capacity, future planning) well-directed to achieve the objectives?
- How has the investment in organizational building enabled the achievement of program objectives?
- How efficiently have the various organization-building processes been implemented in terms of time and cost?
- Will gains from investment in processes be sustainable?
Approach and Methodology
- Method/ Design: Qualitative: Review of BT’s program, grant proposal documents, and data to assess the effectiveness of system design and delivery?
- Evaluation framework:The OECD-DAC framework was used to guide the process evaluation. Four DAC criteria have been emphasized in the study, in consultation with APF:
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- Relevance: Is investment in organization-building efforts well-directed?
- Efficiency: How efficient has the implementation been in terms of utilization of time and funds
- Effectiveness: Have the organizational building efforts been successful in achieving stated objectives?
- Sustainability: What processes have been put in place to facilitate the sustainability of gains?
- Key Respondents/ Informants: BT staff (head office and field), relevant stakeholders in program locations, and APF program managers.
- Key Areas of Inquiry: Breakthrough’s organizational development (OD) journey and study timeline, Pre-grant phase: rationale and objectives of investment in OD, Grant phase: assessment of organizational development and progress achieved, strengthening of resource mobilization (RM) to enable sustainability, setting up systems and processes to support institutional functions and improve organizational efficiency, resilience, and sustainability, investing in staff capacity building to strengthen organizational efficiency, program delivery strategy and scale-up efforts.
- Sample: 33 conversations were conducted covering 31 stakeholders
Impact
The evaluation findings demonstrated that supporting the institutional growth of an organization is equally vital to offering direct funding for its programs. Moreover, the findings unveiled that executing OD grants is intricate, necessitating cooperative efforts between the funder and grantee to outline the grant's scope and implementation approach. These insights derived from the evaluation are anticipated to guide APF in shaping its approach to bestowing potential OD grants in the future.
Contact
17/109, Lower Ground Floor, Vikram Vihar, Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi – 110024