Getting the design of the programme right is important at the outset because your commitments are defined at this stage. Ideally your own staff should be engaged in the design process so you can draw on their understanding of the context, needs and solutions and, most importantly, be familiar with the thinking behind the programme that they will implement.
The problem is that designing a programme takes a lot of time, energy and resources and invariably pulls staff away from their other work (often managing or supporting existing programmes). Our consultants also have years of experience in different development and humanitarian contexts and can suggest different approaches that have worked in other settings that you might want to adopt in your programme design. For these reasons, some organisations have found it was more efficient to engage Orgnex to work with their team and other stakeholders to map out the process, draw together the information and prepare the narrative, theory of change, logical framework, budget etc. depending on your requirements.
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Our consultants will conduct workshops (using problem and solution trees, SWOT Analysis and other tools), focus groups and interviews with your team and stakeholders as well as review literature in order to surface and analyse the information. We can help you identify the gaps in information that need to be filled, especially if you plan to prepare a donor proposal to seek funding for your programme. Orgnex consultants are experienced in developing compelling proposals for a wide range of donors and have a solid track record of securing donor grants for organisations that have well thought out designs for programming.
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Contact us to talk about your ideas for developing new programming.
Programme Design
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Programme Proposal Development
Securing donor funding is becomingly increasingly competitive and difficult. Diversifying your donor base and being able to prepare outstanding proposals is essential. However, ultimately the best way to secure funding is winning the trust of donors through delivering great programming that donors want to be associated with. Organisations often focus on winning funding grants rather than meeting the commitments it already has to the highest standard possible. Growth of an organisation might be important, but at the end of the day, growing a programme should only be a goal if you are confident that what you will deliver will provide tangible benefits for the people you serve.
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A proposal can only be as good as the analysis and understanding of the organisation or it risks becoming fictional. There are many organisations doing excellent work, using novel approaches, which fail to attract the funding they need to scale up or even continue their vital work. Orgnex aims to work with these organisations, to advance worthwhile causes, and help them have greater impact on the lives of the poor, marginalised and vulnerable.
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Orgnex has highly experienced consultants who can work with you to prepare compelling proposals. Orgnex consultants are experienced in developing successful proposals for a wide range of donors and have a solid track record of securing donor grants for organisations that have well thought out programme designs. We can work with you to develop the programme logic, theory of change, thinking through your strategies and activities as well as planning the resources required. Whilst Orgnex consultants bring a range of technical skills to suit the nature of the proposal, our consultants rely on, and draw out, your intimate knowledge of the context and your stakeholders.
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We can work with your team at your pace building understanding and transferring proposal writing skills in the process.
To discuss your ideas and needs around developing proposals contact us.
Evaluation and Review
Learning is a vital way to ensure that your programme is best meeting the needs of your clients, participants, stakeholders, and beneficiaries. The organisations that are open to learning (from successes and failures), finding new ways to do things, and welcome feedback about their work. These are the organisations known to be leaders in their field; the ones that others consult with because they are known for freely sharing what they have learned; they are organisations that are true to themselves and honest about representing their work. These organisations also tend to be the ones that people with energy, optimism, commitment and great ideas gravitate to.
These are the organisations that regularly hold their work up to scrutiny by people whose opinion they value. This is not just through external evaluations but through really listening to the programme participants, ongoing monitoring and adaptation of programming, and building accountability into networks and partnerships. If your organisation is one that tends to only conduct evaluations because your donors expect you to (and fund the evaluation), there is a real risk that you are missing opportunities to learn and improve your programming.
Orgnex has consultants who are experts in monitoring as well as evaluation. We can help your programme teams better understand and undertake monitoring to ensure you are gathering and analysing the information you need to keep your programmes on track and meet your commitments. We will customise trainings to meet your needs as well as providing ongoing support and backstopping to implement effective monitoring, learning and accountability systems if that is what you need. Contact us to talk about how we could help you ensure your programme quality systems are serving your needs.
We recognise that, whilst an external consultant can rarely understand your programming or the context as well as your programme team, we are also not weighed down by attachments to certain ways of doing things. We bring experiences and ideas from other situations that you may not know about that could make your programme more innovative and effective. Evaluations are an opportunity to pull together all the information and ideas there are about the way you are implementing. From this snapshot, you can take stock of what has been achieved, and we will give you suggestions to that can strengthen your work and impact.
Orgnex brings together teams of international and national consultants with the sectoral expertise and evaluation experience to best meet your needs. Orgnex often collaborates with consultancy firms in different countries to ensure the optimal team with first hand understanding of the context. Orgnex will provide honest evaluations with evidence based findings and recommendations that are practical and sensible. We see the evaluation as a chance for you to throw around ideas with experts who are objective, open and skilled listeners. Whilst we will highlight the strengths and achievements of the programme we will also surface shortcomings, weakness and areas that need improving. We will deliver a high quality evaluation report written by a native English or French speaker that you will be able to publicise and share with your stakeholders as you wish. If you want an evaluation that will only describe your successes without analysing the things that maybe didn’t go to plan, in all honesty, Orgnex is not the right organisation for you to engage.
To date Orgnex, in collaboration with others, has undertaken programme evaluations for organisations such as ActionAid, Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, CARE International, Save the Children, USAID and DFID.
For more information about our evaluations and how we can help you evaluate your work please contact us.
QUALITY AUDITS
Phil Miller of Orgnex is a Senior Auditor with Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI). HQAI is the sole body accredited to certify international aid organisations against the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS). The Core Humanitarian Standard was developed through consultations with actors from throughout the international humanitarian sector. In March 2024, ten years after it was first developed the CHS was revised and the new standard launched.
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Phil has been an HQAI auditor since the inception of CHS apart from a hiatus from 2017 to 2022. Auditing against the CHS is an intense process as it involves reviewing documentation, interviewing staff of aid agencies and visiting the communities where aid was delivered. It is particularly through these conversations with the people who are directly impacted by the aid programme, that insights into how the CHS is being implemented become apparent.
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The practice of quality auditing has similarities with the programme review and evaluation. As quality auditors we abide by underlying principles such as independence and objectivity and apply methodologies that seek to triangulate information from various sources before reaching conclusions. Undertaking quality audits of organisations against the CHS is a meticulous process that delves into the details of how an organisation operates but also connects the pieces to build a picture of the systems and culture of the organisation.
How International Aid works?
After settling back into Australia, I became aware that many people were curious about how international aid and development worked. There were a number of misconceptions about foreign aid. People were sceptical about its value and actual impact on the lives of poor people in developing countries. It became apparent that whilst many aid agencies had become quite clever at encouraging people to donate to their charity, there was less emphasis on helping people to understand about how the process worked.
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People do not expect aid to be perfect and it is my belief that helping people to understand the value and limitations of aid through balanced and honest discussion would help people to make more informed decisions about giving.
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I’m Phil Miller and I live in South Melbourne. For over 20 years I was an Aid Worker, living and working in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tanzania, Nepal, Laos and Papua New Guinea. As a consultant I evaluate and assess the performance of aid agencies against an international standard as well as against organisations own goals for their work. This work has taken me to dozens of other countries all over the world. This experience has been a great privilege.
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I have developed a free 2 to 3 hour interactive presentation for groups of people who are interested in understanding more about the international aid and development sector. I allow plenty of time for discussion and answer honestly any questions you have based on my own experience and knowledge of the sector. My aim is promote understanding and informed debate in our communities about a sector that is sometimes maligned or politicised and I do not make political comments or promote about any particular charity or organisation.
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If you are interested in hosting an in-person or online event to hear more about how international aid works, please contact me.
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-Phill Miller