During your project’s implementation, you will often take moments to evaluate your impact and progress, either for donor reporting or internal reasons. From time to time, especially in volatile areas or complex projects, you may want to add a Merit, Worth, and Significance Analysis to the roster. It looks at your project as a whole and how it fits in your context, so it’s a good place to think through your role, support future contribution analysis and pave the way for your impact assessment.
Merit
The technical quality of your project – whether it’s been designed well, if your logic model still works, and the soundness or validity of your approach.
Worth
The practical value of your project – does it meet needs, is it worthwhile to your communities, does it give them tangible benefits? Within this, we also look at the feasibility and sustainability.
Significance
The broader impact of your project – does it contribute to the existing work others have done, how does it build on your past work, what could its broader impact be, what new knowledge or ideas will it generate, what advocacy victories could it lead to, and why is it important or valuable? This element would be the most useful to evaluate as part of a longer-term impact assessment, or for an ex-post evaluation, even a midterm or endterm evaluation.
1. Define Your Assessment Criteria
What aspects of your project will you evaluate, and how can you make them specific? Ensure they align with your project’s goals and that success and failure are clearly articulated.
2. Gather Data
Collect data and evidence – through surveys, interviews, data analysis, or even direct observations. Be thorough in your data collection, and don’t forget sources of verification.
3. Assess Merit
Evaluate the technical quality of your project. Ask questions like:
- Are you following the planned methodology and best practices?
- How closely to the project plan have you stuck during the implementation period?
- How can you adapt to new needs and still focus on the project’s goals?
- Is the data collection and analysis conducted accurately?
- Are there any deviations from the project plan, and if so, are they justified?
- What have these deviations shown us, and how can we use that learning?
4. Assess Worth
Assess the practical value of your project. Consider questions such as:
- Are you meeting the needs and expectations of your communities and partners?
- If not, what else could you do?
- Are you achieving the desired outcomes and impacts?
- If not, what else could you do?
- Is the project cost-effective and sustainable?
- Where have you had the most success in cutting costs and efficiently allocating resources? Where could these best be moved to make the most use of funds?
5. Assess Significance
Examine the broader impact of your project. Reflect on questions like:
- Is your project contributing to the field or addressing critical issues?
- How and how not? Who is supporting you in this, and what is your role?
- Are there opportunities to scale up or replicate your project?
- How and what ideas are coming to you? Document these since they can be shared with your donor as ideas for follow-on projects.
- Is it promoting social justice or equity?
- How and what remains for your ultimate goals to be achieved?
- Compare the significance you’ve uncovered with your ambitious Theory of Change. Are you on track?
6. Analyse and Synthesise Findings
Identify strengths and weaknesses and look for trends or patterns that may help guide improvements.
7. Develop Actionable Recommendations
Formulate actionable recommendations to enhance your project’s merit, worth, and significance. Prioritize these recommendations based on their potential impact.
8. Communicate and Iterate
Share your findings and recommendations with your project team, communities, partners, and funders. Encourage open discussions and collaboration to implement changes and improvements. Remember that a Merit, Worth, and Significance Assessment should be an iterative process, with regular check-ins to measure progress.
