Impact Planning, Assessment & Learning

Keystone's Impact Planning, Assessment and Learning (IPAL) method provides a coherent framework to meet the needs of all different constituents, staff, managers and funders.

It actively fosters Constituency Voice and encourages staff to build effective relationships with other constituents. It also encourages staff to see themselves as a part of a wider system of actors, rather than just within their own organization.

An IPAL system has five elements:

1. Articulate the Theory of Change
The first step is to develop a vision of success of the social changes desired. Then organizations identify who has to do what to achieve and sustain those changes, considering the full system of relevant constituents - including allies and opponents. This is expressed as a system map.

Constituents' contributions to change are analysed further, including identifying preconditions needed to achieve them. This completes the theory of change.

2. Identify strategies and indicators
Using the theory of change, organizations and constituents identify specific strategies for how they will intervene in the system to maximum effect.

Indicators are identified to provide evidence of whether strategies are working. This can generate evidence of organizations' impact and also test key assumptions made in the theory of change. It can be particularly empowering if primary constituents are involved in designing indicators.

The costs and benefits of using different indicators are considered, and how they can be used creatively to meet the needs of constituents, staff, managers and funders alike.

 3. Monitor against indicators
Organizations use a variety of methods to collect data and record intended and unintended results. These are designed to be appropriate for the context and sensitive to existing power dynamics. We encourage organizations to limit the number of indicators they use.

They are likely to include established methods, like monitoring activities, changes in practice, milestones and budgets.

They also often include different ways of gathering feedback from constituents such as through observation, surveys, focus groups, during service delivery, events and others. Feedback can generate qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative data can be used to meet the needs of senior decision-makers (including donors).

4. Report back and out
Organizations are encouraged to report progress compared to their strategies and theory of change back to constituents. This includes reporting monitoring data (including feedback) in ways that are public and easy for constituents to access.

This transparency provides benefits including: validating reports, providing the basis for joint reflection and learning, and building respect among constituents.

We encourage organizations to publish what constituents say about their work - and also what constituents say about their reports. We call this the Feedback Principle of Public Reporting.

5. Deliberate and improve
Finally, organizations reflect on their work together with constituents. This includes reviewing progress to date, testing the original theory of change and identifying lessons from it for the future.

Ideally, reflections culminate in revising plans for future action. This means that organizations need a reasonable degree of flexibility in their actions. We suggest that reflections happen every few months, or at least once per year.

By reflecting together on systematic data on progress, organizations can generate new insights. By acting on them, organizations demonstrate the value of data (including feedback), which can cultivate better feedback in the future.