By Kayin Scholtz and Jessica Horler

The noble aims of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning to improve impact can be distorted in practice, and increase the stark power imbalance between donors and NPOs if misapplied. But by shifting from compliance and control to curiosity, MEL can serve the work, not overshadow it – and that begins by putting learning, not performance, at the centre.

South Africa’s non-profit sector is in crisis. With billions of rands in US investment from Pepfar, USAid and the NIH being frozen or withdrawn, nonprofit organisations (NPOs) face job losses and cuts to essential services. These recent shocks compound longstanding challenges in a sector already stretched thin.

Yet this is a sector that matters deeply. NPOs are a vital part of South Africa’s social safety net, often stepping in where the government and markets fall short. Powered by dedicated staff and supported by a diverse range of donors, nonprofits work in partnership with communities to tackle our toughest problems. However, this important work can be undermined by the increasing pressure donors place on NPOs to measure and report on their social impact. 

Nonprofits matter

South Africa’s nonprofit sector is vast and dynamic. Nearly 300,000 NPOs were officially registered in 2024 – more than double the number from a decade ago. They range from small grassroots collectives to national organisations, mobilising tens of billions of rands from local and international sources. Corporate social investment alone accounted for an estimated R12.7-billion in 2024, which may only account for 30% of total investment.

But funding is not evenly distributed, and many smaller NPOs struggle to survive. When organisations close down, communities lose trusted relationships, and our country loses hard-won expertise. But the issue isn’t limited funding – it’s the power imbalance between the people doing the work and the people providing the money.

But the issue isn’t limited funding – it’s the power imbalance between the people doing the work and the people providing the money.

Donor demands vs community needs

Most South African NPOs rely heavily on donor funding. To survive, they must align their work with donor objectives, even when those goals don’t reflect needs on the ground. At best, it means tweaking language to match donor jargon. At worst, it means reshaping entire interventions to suit donors’ aims – “which in reality may be different from the needs of local beneficiaries”. 

As one NPO leader noted in a South African study:

“You really have to nurture your big donors… when their strategy change, you need to talk to them and say, ‘is there any way we can adapt what we do to meet it?’ ” 

When donors hold all the power, grantmaking can easily become rigid and prescriptive, prohibiting NGOs from designing interventions based on their knowledge and experience. Strategising is expected to take place in the grantmaking organisation, not the NPOs, which are tasked with simply doing. Consequently, NGOs are funded to deliver irrelevant interventions destined to have little impact.

Further, when conforming to donors’ understanding of reality becomes a matter of financial survival – both for an organisation and for the people who work there – telling a compelling story about their “impact” in the real world becomes paramount.

The quantification of impact

Since the 1990s, philanthropy has shifted from a charitable approach towards an impact-driven social investment approach. Many NPOs have been required to adopt Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems to report on achievements. These are organisational processes and practices that involve the continuous collecting and analysing of data to track the progress of service delivery and to assess the social impact of their work. 

Since becoming a staple of the South African non-profit landscape, MEL has increasingly reflected donors’ need to maximise their resources in a high-demand context; both success and accountability are thus framed in terms of measurable performance, efficiency and return on investment. 

This has led to a strong emphasis on quantifiable indicators, KPIs, and narrowly defined (but easier to quantify) social outcomes. While this approach can support transparency and accountability, it can also narrow NPOs’ focus on what is easiest to measure and report to donors, sidelining less tangible but equally critical aspects of change – such as trust-building or community ownership.

At face value, MEL is a valuable practice – intended to help organisations learn, reflect, adapt and improve, using data. But when MEL is driven primarily by donor agendas, it risks becoming less about learning and more about compliance. And when those closest to the work are excluded from defining what success looks like, MEL simply accentuates the power imbalance between NPOs and donors.  

Finally, MEL systems are rarely used for mutual accountability. NPOs account to donors, but it is rare to see significant efforts for donor accountability. 

Once impact metrics are tied to funding, measurement risks becoming performance theatre.

What’s measured is what’s valued

When MEL systems are designed for donor accountability rather than internal learning, it can drain time and energy, forcing organisations to focus on performance metrics that keep donors happy, but do not reflect the nuanced change they aim to create. In a 2012 article aptly named If You Don’t Count, You Don’t Count, Natascha Mueller-Hirsch warned of the implications of an imbalance between measurement and mission: 

“…what impact measurement then ultimately produces is NPOs that are effective in terms of management, governance and audit, but not effective at their core mission”.

Goodhart’s Law highlights a related risk:  “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Once impact metrics are tied to funding, measurement risks becoming performance theatre. Instead of asking “What are we learning?” NPOs are forced to ask, “What do donors want to hear?”. 

This is not new. Early 2000s research found MEL often created fear, deception and administrative burdens for local NGOs. In our experience, little has changed.

Doing good, better

To improve outcomes, we must prioritise learning. This begins with shifting the donor focus from results to improving both programme design and implementation, especially for smaller and newer NPOs.

Accountability matters. But rigid, top-down measurement from donors can do more harm than good.

Organisational success is not only about the organisation itself. Programme design requires a good understanding of what kinds of interventions are most likely to succeed in solving a specific problem. Research suggests that professional influences, fit between intervention and community, infrastructure that supports implementation, partnerships, stable funding and a supportive policy environment all impact the success of an intervention. 

Studies have found that social outcomes are determined by how well interventions are implemented. Even excellent programme designs fail to achieve impact without strong execution. Strong implementation depends on continuous monitoring, reflection and course correction, which are features of MEL when implemented effectively and with a focus on learning.

Donors should prioritise funding evaluations of programme design and delivery, before expecting measurement of outcomes and impact – particularly for small and medium-sized organisations.

It’s necessary to first ask: “Is this programme well designed?” and “ Is it being implemented well?” Only after knowing these answers can we ask, “Does it work?” 

From control to curiosity

Accountability matters. But rigid, top-down measurement from donors can do more harm than good. Instead, NPOs should first be supported to be learning organisations. 

We should reward flexibility, course correction and learning – these are legitimate outcomes in and of themselves. The Human Learning Systems (HLS) approach is an example for how to go about structuring learning in organisations. It shifts the focus from hitting rigid targets to learning through experimentation, storytelling, building relationships, and elevating community voice. 

HLS encourages adaptive learning cycles and team reflection. But NPOs cannot do this alone. It requires donors to move from contractual accountability to relational accountability – where trust, humility and equity characterise the NPO-donor relationship. In the philanthropic sector, trust-based philanthropy provides a practical framework for improving grantmaking, reducing power imbalances and focusing attention on practices that support good quality implementation.

The noble aims of MEL to improve impact can be distorted in practice, and increase the stark power imbalance between donors and NPOs if misapplied. But by shifting from compliance and control to curiosity, MEL can serve the work, not overshadow it – and that begins by putting learning, not performance, at the centre.

  
Dr Jessica Horler has been working as a programme evaluator in South Africa’s nonprofit sector for nearly 10 years, primarily consulting with nonprofit organisations operating in South Africa’s early childhood development (ECD) sector. In 2024, Horler completed her Doctorate in Programme Evaluation, exploring how systems thinking can support monitoring, evaluation and learning in ECD nonprofits. She is based at DataDrive2030, where she collaborates with ECD clients to use data to enhance the quality of early learning programmes in low-resource contexts across the country.

Kayin Scholtz has 13 years of experience working with innovative organisations focused on reducing poverty and improving child outcomes at a national level. Working with NGOs, provincial and national government and funding organisations, Scholtz has supported policy development, programmes implementation and the distribution of funds, all with the aim of improving the lives of vulnerable people. He has strong collaborative experience and is a co-founder of the Real Reform for ECD Campaign. He holds a Bachelor of Social Work and an Honours in Policy and Management from the University of Cape Town.  He is the digital transformation lead at SmartStart.

 Originally published in the Daily Maverick  (Used with permission of the authors)