Between September 2023 – December 2024, The Mission Motor supported 27 organizations from all over the world. We provided long-term support to 8, and short-term advice or services to 19 of them.

Our long-term support takes teams through (part of) a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) cycle, addressing topics such as stakeholder analysis, theory of change, monitoring systems, and survey design. Our short-term services included giving feedback on theories of change, setting metrics, hosting workshops, and providing templates and other resources.

Results

• Organizations have shown improvements in both knowledge and behavior.

• 16 fully implemented changes were tracked across 9 of the organizations that we worked with extensively. Another 13 changes are currently being actively worked on.
  
  Examples include organizations:

  • eliminating leafleting from their program design after reviewing the evidence;

  • changing their mass media campaign from radio-based to social media-based after clarifying their target demographic;

  • changing their organizational reporting lines to better reflect the responsibilities broken down in their theory of change;

  • changing its report structure after surveying its target audience (an organization with a heavy focus on research). 

  The number of changes exceeded our expectations, especially as we only sampled nine of the organizations we worked with. However, we do not anticipate a comparative amount of changes happening within organizations that received a lighter level of support. The main concern remains whether these changes will be sustained once our support ends.

• One organization completed a full MEL cycle, which includes conducting data analysis, and reviewing and gathering of learnings. We aimed for a higher number. As such, we see this as an area of improvement for our work.

• We determined which parts of our program are more effective, what elements are lacking, and have adapted our program accordingly. Our findings were published in April 2024. The most significant adjustment involved moving from a cohort model to a more tailored, individualized approach with each organization.

Overall, we believe that our 1-on-1 organization support work has been successful at making organizations change. Our two primary concerns are the speed with which groups are progressing through the process and whether changes will be sustainable.

Although our focus is on 1-on-1 support, we also foster broader collaboration between MEL practitioners. We host a MEL sub-Slack channel, organize webinars, and facilitate the exchange of best practices between MEL professionals in the animal space.

Please see our 2023 - 2024 Review for more details, challenges and learnings.