This guide provides an excellent high-level overview of monitoring and evaluation design concepts. It clarifies that teams should consider their resources and need for precision and establishing causality when choosing their M&E design. This guide is not intended to be a step-by-step how-to guide for all practitioners. Rather, it strives to clarify key M&E topics in simple terms and highlight the key decisions teams should consider in designing their M&E efforts. This resource would be most valuable to team members responsible for carrying out monitoring and evaluation. Citation: Foundations of Success. 2019. Designing Monitoring and Evaluation Approaches under the Open Standards:…

A key foundation of any science is a common nomenclature that practitioners can use to describe—in a mutually intelligible way—the problems they are facing and the solutions they are using. For example, if a conservation project team faces the threat of “cattle” and another “grazing” and yet another “beef production,” they may not realize that they are all dealing with the same issue. As a result, cross-project learning is difficult, and the ability to meaningfully roll-up information across projects is greatly hampered. The taxonomies presented here began with a collaborative effort between the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and CMP to…

This case study shows the evolution of a management plan through several iterations using the Open Standards. One of 56 organizations spanning Australia, Territory Natural Resources Management (TNRM) picked up on the Open Standards in 2014. Their first two iterations, the 2005 plan and the 2010 plan, proved difficult to implement, so they turned to the OS to help structure planning, implementation and review, beginning with a review of the 2010 plan. The plan, encompassing almost 1.4 million square km (17.5%) of Australia, sought to: Guide and prioritise investments and activities in natural resources management (NRM) in the Northern Territory…

*An updated threat classificiation is here! Please click here to access the IUCN-CMP Direct Threats Classification. There is no one “right” classification system for threats, but Direct Threats Classification (v2.0) (Version 2.0 en français) has developed an agreed system that optimizes the following criteria: Simple – Uses clear language and examples / understandable by practitioners Hiearchical – Creates a logical way of grouping items that are related to one another to facilitate use of the classification and meaningful analyses at different levels Comprehensive – Contains all possible items, at least at higher levels of the hierarchy Consistent – Ensures that…

This excellent journal paper seeks to integrate evidence-based conservation with the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation and is freely available online here from the new SCB journal Conservation Science and Practice. Being a journal paper rather than user guidance, some of the concepts and explanations may be difficult to grasp, but to enhance usability, the results from this work are being incorporated into Version 4.0 of the Open Standards as well as into Miradi Software. A Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) working group brought together leading experts from both practice and academia to explicitly incorporate principles of evidence-based conservation…

This toolkit focuses on improving the quality of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of projects when planning to evaluate outcomes and impacts. Whilst its stated focus is on small and medium sized projects, it could equally be applied to large projects. Similarly, it can be used when planning, implementing or analyzing and adapting projects. The document clearly highlights the main considerations in doing an evaluation (and even whether you should evaluate), and further identifies a range of M&E tools useful for a variety of different conservation strategies. Its three sections: outlines some of the key concepts relating to evaluation of outcomes…

I am unable to attach a file in the related documents below so I hope you will be able to access the following Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G84s8L7PXb4E81LfqqJlzf0CJLadKVlhCuItBXyRYwU/edit?usp=sharing. Thanks! Charles