This post is for you — if you are juggling a dozen different reports and spreadsheets for every project. This post is for you — if you bought a monitoring and evaluation database, only to find it disappointing. This post is for you — if you feel like your workday would be…

People don’t like doing M&E. Not all people, obviously. But some people. And they probably have good reasons for that. If you are trying to get more people in your nonprofit to like M&E, you are in the right place. My last blogpost was about why nonprofit staff often feel…

When I meet new people in the non-profit sector and say I’m a Monitoring and Evaluation person, they often react like this: A rather guilty smile: “My organisation doesn’t do much M&E because of funding/time/human resource constraints. But I know, we should do more!” A sympathetic scoff: “Oh, I’m really…

There are two things about “learning” which everyone in the social impact sector agrees on: Firstly, “Learning from data/evidence is essential for any organisation trying to affect social change.” Secondly, “Learning from data/evidence is difficult and we are not doing it well enough”. Every publication, conference, or staff meeting in…

Do human societies have a better chance at surviving and beating climate change as democracies or as autocratic states? Many clever and reputable people have given this thorough consideration, with inconclusive results. Some blame the moderate way of decision-making in democracies, the short-term orientation of elected politicians, and the influence…

or: Why I am fantasising about standardisation and algorithms. The NGO/non-profit world has told each other stories about its need for “digital transformation” or “digital maturity” for probably more than a decade now. …

This is a post about power and climate change, which is actually part of a small series. You can read the first post here. Synopsis: the small island developing state Dominica was hit badly by a hurricane in September 2017, pushing its Prime minister to embark on a campaign to…

Dominica is a tiny island state in the eastern Caribbean (not knowing that is almost excusable). Think green hills, glass-clear waterfalls, beautiful beaches with few tourists. Formerly 70 000 inhabitants, probably significantly less at the moment. Dominica got hit by hurricane Maria, a category 5 hurricane, in September 2017. Even…

This is the third post in a little series. It’s about climate change, disasters, and an island’s quest for hurricane resilience. You can read the first post here. Synopsis: the small island developing state Dominica was hit badly by a hurricane in September 2017, causing its Prime minister to embark…