To prepare for Feed the Future’s new monitoring and evaluation framework under the Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS), implementing partners (IPs) explore both challenges and strategies to help guide Feed the Future programs during this transition. The recent posts highlighted below offer practical steps and advice that IPs can take now to ensure a smooth transition process.

Navigating the New Feed the Future Indicators

Feed the Future recently underwent a shift to its second phase of implementation, guided by the GFSS that was developed following the Global Food Security Act of 2016. Feed the Future released a revised common results framework and a host of both new and modified standard performance monitoring indicators in March 2018. In this post, Fintrac’s M&E team explores critical aspects of the new guidance and implications on implementing partners, focusing specifically on what has changed, key features of the revised indicators, potential challenges and where we go from here.

First Steps in the Transition to New Feed the Future Indicators

With reporting season and the fiscal year-end quickly approaching, Fintrac’s M&E team introduces a handful of practical steps that implementing partners can take right now to help ensure a smooth transition under the new GFSS guidance. This post covers the following areas: (1) mapping out the transition, (2) proposing changes to the Mission, (3) contract modifications and budget changes, (4) implications for MEL budgets, (5) collecting baseline data, (6) setting targets, and (7) updating routine data collection systems.

How Feed the Future is Helping Us Better Measure Market System Impact

The new Feed the Future MEL framework involves indicators that track stakeholders across agricultural value chains. In this post, the Land O’Lakes M&E team discusses how Feed the Future is encouraging IPs to measure changes across the entire market system, stressing how important it is for all projects—especially ones taking a market systems approach—to have a clear, detailed and dynamic theory of change. Many standard performance indicators measured by IPs have changed and are now better able to capture market systems changes. Feed the Future is also encouraging IPs to develop custom indicators and other qualitative approaches to measure more nuanced changes in their projects. The new context indicators, plus the standard indicators measured at the Zone of Influence and national levels, will also assist IPs to capture market systems changes. Finally, Feed the Future is emphasizing the need to analyze, learn and adapt, and USAID’s Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) framework will help IPs do that.