SFCG Organizational Outcomes Project
Background and Introduction
In 2007, ILT began a project to identify the most common indicators used by SFCG for its
various projects. The findings of the first review of proposals identifying output and outcome
indicators was presented at SFCG’s annual meeting, Big Week ’08. The findings showed that
SFCG staff is quite skilled at writing output indicators, those that describe products, trainings,
radio programming, etc. Eight output indicators that SFCG might want to track across
programs, and these were incorporated into the data gathering process for the Annual Statistics
2009 report. This is now an ongoing effort. What was learned from this process was that well
written, or SMART 1 outcome indicators were largely not evident. Thus, a second level of
analysis was conducted to identify the outcome indicators that were evident or implied and to
begin to shape them into well-written indicators that could guide indicator development for
future proposals. Two documents support this effort. The first is an Outcome Indicators
spreadsheet (OSI) that was provided to SFCG staff in April 2009, and the second is a report on
a survey conducted in August 2009 to obtain feedback on staff use of the spreadsheet. The
following is an overview of the OSI and the ongoing effort to expand and improve it and a
report on the findings from the survey of use by SFCG staff.
Outcome Indicator Development
Outcome indicators are indicators that describe behavior, attitude, skill and knowledge changes
resulting from our work. The nature of SFCG’s work often makes it difficult to track these types
of changes accurately and realistically. The process of identifying outcome indicators to
develop the OSI covered a review of proposals written from mid 2006 to mid 2008. The
indicators were organized by themes to create a document that could be shared across the
organization. The purpose of sharing these indicators was to make proposal writing easier and
clearer by providing sample outcome indicators that could be tailored to current proposals. A
draft set of SMART indicators was developed to be used as models for proposal writing and
project design.
Future Improvement of the Indicators
The OIS is a living project that will grow based on SFCG’s work and, in coordination, with what
others in the field are doing to identify indicators for peacebuilding. More indicators for other
themes, such as restorative and transformational justice, human rights, etc., will be added. A
future plan is to set the indicators document up to have a “back page” that staff can click on for
each indicator that will provide useful information on what methodologies best suit the indicator
and sets out questions to guide the user in tailoring the indicator for a specific program.
What’s in the Document?
1
SMART = Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic and Timely
The OIS provides 98 outcome indicators arranged by themes addressed in various SFCG
programs. A set of sample indicators is attached to this document. For a reader or user, focus
should be on the themes that match the work of a particular program. The themes include:
• Elections
• Good Governance and Participatory Democracy
• HIV/AIDS
• Refugees and IDPs
• Security Sector Reform
• Sexual Violence Against Women
• Prisoner Reintegration
• Ethnic/Cultural Dialogue and Reconciliation
• Leadership Development
The OIS contains four items of information for each indicator:
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Example objectives.
The place in the hierarchy of goals, objectives and activities and whether the indicator is
qualitative or quantitative.
An example of a SMART indicator to match the objective
Means of verification: suggested sources of instruments or strategies for data collection
A column where questions are posed to prompt deeper thinking on the appropriateness
of an indicator and/or a place for users to write their own suggestions.
Continuing Evolution
ILT plans to integrate the expansion and clarification of the OIS into it “monitoring and
evaluation tracker” (M&E Tracker) process. Currently SFCG’s DME coordinators are using a
spreadsheet to write indicators from proposals and track their progress on a quarterly basis to
provide data for program review of progress and to ultimately provide data for SFCG’s annual
Core Statistics Report, part of the Annual Report.
One of the weak links in the first version of the OIS was that the indicators are from older
proposals and the data is not available to show how they were used or tested against the reality
of program implementation. Coordinating the development of indicator examples with the M&E
Tracker data will provide one method of testing the validity of indicators as written and
implemented. Reviews of more recent proposals, some still in implementation, provided
additional indicators and themes that also have not yet been compared to implementation.
They do, however, indicate an improvement in the writing of indicators. In the August 2009
survey this improvement is attributed to the continued skill development promoted by ILT and
provision of examples in the original OIS.
We plan to choose a few case studies for testing the indicators in a few country program sites.
ILT will continue to periodically survey staff to determine how the OIS is being used and what
modifications still need to be made to improve the quality of the document. For example
project activities need to be added to make connections between action and outcome clearer
Finally, ILT is in conversation with other NGOs about what they are doing in the area of
outcome indicator development for peacebuilding and we will be sharing our findings and
practices with them.