Foreign Ministry published second part of CSOs’ evaluation

Press release 55/2017
21 March 2017

The evaluation of six civil society organisations’ (CSOs) programme work and humanitarian aid was published by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs today. This is the second of three reports which will form the first overall evaluation of the results of the programme-based support and humanitarian aid carried out by CSOs, funded by the Ministry.

The Ministry evaluates the programme-based support and the long-term development cooperation programmes of all the 22 CSOs receiving programme support. The evaluation is conducted in three parts. The organisations evaluated in the second part were: Fida International, Finn Church Aid, Finnish Red Cross, Plan International Finland, Save the Children Finland and World Vision Finland.

The evaluation report concludes that the CSOs’ activities respond to the needs of local people and that they reach also people in fragile countries and in challenging circumstances.

“According to the evaluation, the CSOs’ programmes and humanitarian aid projects save lives, support human development and strengthen local civil society activities especially at grass-roots level. We are obviously happy to hear that and the results confirm our assumptions,” says Jyrki Nissilä, Director of the Unit for Civil Society at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

The report recommends, for example, closer cooperation between the CSOs, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the missions abroad, as well as better coordination of programme-based support and humanitarian aid. The evaluation also states that even though CSO programmes are of high quality, it is difficult to evaluate their long-term effects, because systematic information is not compiled in the course of the programmes.

The evaluation does not rank the CSOs’ achievements in any order of precedence based on quality considerations. Each organisation is examined in light of how they have conducted the programme and what results they have achieved. The first evaluation examined the monitoring of programmes’ effectiveness and performance management. This separate evaluation gave both information and recommendations to the CSOs on how to develop their development of performance management systems in future. The evaluation proved that all CSOs have already invested in the monitoring of effectiveness but that there is still much that needs to be done.

It also shows that combining development cooperation and humanitarian aid in programme work is not always straightforward. The support is administered in different Units of the Foreign Ministry with different funding cycle lengths.

“One current topic of discussion is better coordination of humanitarian aid and development cooperation. This evaluation will help us develop our activities,” says Claus Lindroos, Director of the Unit for Humanitarian Assistance and Policy.

The CSOs’ activities are well aligned with Finland’s development policy priorities. However, the efficiency of the programmes has in places suffered from their geographical and thematic fragmentation. The recent cuts directed at development cooperation show in CSOs and in the Foreign Ministry, for example in reduced provision of technical expertise. The report recommends that it would be important to concentrate on efforts to strengthen local civil societies together with enhanced cooperation between the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, CSOs and embassies. CSOs should also seek funding from and closer cooperation with companies and learn about their models of cooperation.

The first part of the evaluation was completed in September 2016. The third and last part of the evaluation will be ready in August 2017.

“As this evaluation is a part of a larger entity, we will draw more accurate conclusions of this evaluation after the results of the last evaluation are available”, says Jyrki Nissilä.

Inquiries: Jyrki Nissilä, Director, Unit for Civil Society, tel. +358 29 535 1205, Claus Lindroos, Director, Unit for Humanitarian Assistance and Policy, tel. +358 29 535 1234, and Sanna Pulkkinen, Desk Officer, Development Evaluation Unit, tel. +358 29 535 1346.

The Foreign Ministry’s email addresses are in the format [email protected]