Throughout the academic year I, along with the rest of the BUILD members, listened to multiple presentations on the importance of monitoring and evaluation to measure the effectiveness of a project or intervention. Although at the time it seemed like a lot of information, I now realize that we only began to scratch the surface of the complexity and difficulty of metrics.
At Value for Women gender metrics are measured at a variety of levels and categories. Metrics are considered at the individual, business, intervention, or ecosystem level, while data on gender is categorized as conventional performance small and growing business metrics, sex desegregated metrics, women specific indicators, women specific programs, and triangulated data collection. These categorizations are not meant to complicate, but instead simplify the wide array of metrics and measurements that organizations currently use to monitor and evaluate data on gender. I began working on metrics with Value for Women by summarizing and organizing notes from the ANDE Metrics Conference. The next step, continued during the second portion of my internship, was to research the indicators created during a brainstorm at the conference. With my research I began to uncover case studies of organizations measuring the beneficial effects of including more women in their portfolios and the success or failure or implementing particular metrics. In addition, I researched how organizations measure gendered factors such as the control of power in the home and satisfaction with work and life balance. What amazed me most about the information I gathered was the vast array of indicators organizations used to measure the same phenomenon. Finally, the complexity of metrics was again revealed to me as I helped create an ecosystem-wide gender metrics survey. The purpose of the survey was to gather information on the metrics that organizations currently measure and would like to measure at both the individual and ecosystem level in order to create a metrics pilot study. Part of what makes Value for Women such an interesting and sophisticated organization is their ecosystem focus. Value for Women aims to build the capacity of ecosystem actors ranging from businesses, organizations, banks, and nonprofits, to support women entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. By collecting data on the metrics used by a variety of organizations working towards a similar cause, Value for Women hopes build the ecosystem's capacity to help women entrepreneurs by helping organizations improve their services and increase their impact. Studying metrics with Value for Women has helped me to build on the knowledge of monitoring and evaluation, metrics, and measurement that I began to learn with BUILD. For more information on Value for Women's metrics initiatives, click on the following link to read an article written by the Stanford Innovation Review: http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/metrics_3.0_a_new_vision_for_shared_metrics
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Annabelle RobertsThis summer Annabelle is interning at Value For Women with support from both BUILD and Empower. Annabelle is based in Boston for the summer and can be reached at [email protected] ArchivesCategories |