Launching our First ImpactMapper M&E Training Program!

In early May, we held our first-ever 5-day monitoring and evaluation (M&E) training with Prospera: International Network of Women’s Funds! Wow, what an amazing ride! Over 30 Prospera women’s fund representatives and evaluation consultants from around the world came together in Brooklyn, NY to learn and share around key M&E challenges and solutions.

Our team was so excited to share ImpactMapper and gather information on women’s funds’ and evaluators’ ongoing needs so we can continue to design awesome solutions through our tool. We learned so much through our inspiring partners and Prospera members over the week!

The training was highly interactive, discussion based and participatory. We covered the following issues over the week.

• Crash course in mixed methods analysis (from preparing your data, data cleaning, coding/tagging data, visualizing and interpreting your data)
• Storytelling and outcomes alignment
• Technical training on how to use the IM software
• Using data to feed back into strategy, M&E processes and organizational and programmatic learning

A number of exciting initiatives came out of the training!

Next year all 12 women’s funds that were part of the training will be using the ImpactMapper tool in their own organizational contexts. A sneak preview of some of the fund’s activities with ImpactMappper appear below. We will be writing more about this over the next year through guest blogs and case studies. So keep your eyes on our blog and landing page!

• FRIDA - The Young Feminist Fund currently uses ImpactMapper to track their stories of change and weave powerful narratives of impact into their M&E and communication materials. This next year they will also be adding in another way of using the tool — by analyzing interview and report data for a research project.
• Semillas will use ImpactMapper surveys to send out their call for grantee proposals this summer and then will follow up with their grantees and use ImpactMapper to track grantee progress and end of grant reports over the next year.
• Prospera, as a network of 38 women’s funds across the Global South and North, will use ImpactMapper to collect information on the collective indicators of impact they have established. This will give them data to demonstrate the reach and impact of women’s funds globally in supporting women’s movement building. It will also provide the network with critical data and stories to make the case for continued and increased investment in women’s foundations globally.

We plan on offering another similar training in the fall of 2018. If you are interested, please do get in touch! team[@]impactmapper.com