Communications Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning Toolkit

"MEL is important to ensure that your communications are strategic, helping you to understand and learn from what works, what doesn't, when and for whom. It is also an important tool for accountability..."

This toolkit provides a framework to think about communications monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), and provides example questions, indicators, and tools to do so. It is based on internal guidance that the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) developed to share with its staff to encourage learning; to improve the quality, reach, and use of its communications; and to help with project and programme planning. The resource toolkit is intended for use by communications, research, and project implementation staff working in think tanks, universities, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The toolkit focuses specifically on strategy, management, outputs, and uptake. It has two key sections:

1. Strategy and management: this section outlines how to plan and manage your communications processes to succeed. It provides eight questions to answer when assessing and learning from your communications strategy and management.
2. Outputs (tangible communication products, activities, and services): this section looks at how to measure the success of your outputs. It goes beyond the usual vanity metrics (downloads and retweets) to address three key dimensions. For each dimension, the toolkit provides example questions, indicators, and tools to monitor, evaluate, and learn.
   • Reach: the breadth of your work and who you are reaching.
   • Quality and usefulness: the technical standard of your work and how relevant it is to your audience.
   • Uptake and use: if and how your work is used.

Points to remember:

• Keep it simple: only seek to measure what can be measured, and be realistic about how much can be tracked given your resources and time.
• Don't just focus on website statistics: think more broadly about MEL to include quality and usefulness, and uptake and use of your outputs, even if you only pick a few indicators.
• Always link back to your objectives: be clear about the questions you are asking and why and how you plan to answer them. Then select the indicators that are most relevant.
• Feed into wider efforts to measure outcomes and impact: communications MEL can't assess overall project or programme impact, but it should be seen as an integral part of that process, not separate.

The approach outlined in the toolkit builds on previous work done by ODI's Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) programme on monitoring and evaluating policy research.