Monitoring gives you a written record of who is using your organisation or project. This will be important to demonstrate to the funder that their money has gone where it was meant to. It will also allow you to show future funder who uses your organisation or project and what they did. Information gathered through monitoring will also feed into evaluation.
There are many ways you can undertake monitoring, depending on the requirements of funders, and your own preference. These include:
á Simple records of names, addresses, when they joined and when they left.
á More detailed records of what activities they were involved in.
á With a bit more research you can find out where people move on to when they move on.
There is a balance to be struck between keeping track of your users and flooding yourself with paper work. It is always best to decide in advance what level of monitoring you are able to undertake and to setup any systems before you start work on your project. This should be decided jointly by the project workers and the Management Committee.
Evaluation uses data collected in monitoring, and other sources to see how well your project or organisation is performing. For example, is it doing what it set out to do? Is it reaching its target group? What have been the results? Evaluation of work allows you to learn from any mistakes, and celebrate your successes. Funders will be keen to see groups looking at their performance, as it shows they are professional and want to achieve the best at all times. Evaluation will enable you to identify areas of further work, and give you solid evidence for future funders.
Evaluation can be done by using the information from monitoring, by consulting beneficiaries and workers through interviews or questionnaires, and honest appraisal of your own performance. These sources will be useful in compiling even a short document describing how your project worked, what was achieved, how it could be done better next time, and areas for future work.