Grant-Making

The performance framework (PF) for the Africa Regional grant includes good practice examples of indicators and workplan tracking measures related to removing legal barriers.

For more information on Workplan tracking measures (WPTM) and Impact/Outcome indicators, please refer to the Monitoring and Evaluation section of the Manual.

• Workplan tracking measures (WPTM) are qualitative milestones and/or input or process measures to measure evaluate progress over the grant implementation period for modules and interventions that cannot be measured with coverage or output indicators. This is most often the case in regional grants or grants that include modules related to, for example, community systems strengthening, certain health system strengthening interventions, removing legal barriers to access, activities addressing gender inequalities, health sector linkages, etc.
• Impact/Outcome indicators are often not available for inclusion in the PFs of regional grants that seek to exclusively to strengthen legal or policy environments, and community systems. However, impact and outcome indicators may be included for certain grants based on the grant’s objectives and in agreement with the Global Fund and the Principal Recipients (PR) (please confirm with your Global Fund Country Team).
• Programme reviews, assessments, or evaluations can serve an important role in assessing performance against grant objectives for grants where no standard indicators are available for use. These normally encompass grants that are focused on strengthening legal and policy environments and community systems. In these scenarios, the need and scope of an evaluation, assessment, and/or thematic review should be agreed with the Global Fund and Principal Recipients (PR). Country Offices (COs) are also encourage to consultant with GFPHST and the GF CT to ensure that adequate budgets are allocated to fund agreed studies (for an evaluation both baseline and endline must be covered). More Guidance on Measuring Equity, Gender Equality and Human Rights is here.

Practice Pointer

Monitoring and evaluation-focused practice pointers:

• For WPTM, ensure concrete, measurable actions at a process level that also contribute to a meaningful assessment of progress. For example, instead of measuring whether meetings to discuss the treatment cascade for KPs occurred, measure who attended, whether minutes with concrete next steps were produced, etc
• Do not overcommit – ambitious and realistic expectations must be balanced, so it is recommended to keep the number of WPTM to a minimum; ‘less is more’.
• Sex- and age-disaggregated data is a key feature for gender-sensitive and/or transformative programming, as it helps to identify key populations and address their needs appropriately by introducing gender-sensitive investments, creating an appropriate national response to the elimination of the three diseases.

Practice Pointer

Finance-focused practice pointers:

• It is critical to ensure that the advocacy to include enabling environment interventions in the funding request is not lost at the time of grant-making (and during implementation). Ensure interventions in the funding request are included in the detailed budget at adequate levels, including sufficient funds for evaluations at baseline, midterm and endline as appropriate for the programme. This often requires skilful negotiation with the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) and Global Fund to understand the importance of these interventions within the context of the grant.
• At times Global Fund finance staff may not have a background in budgeting for human rights, and therefore may not fully understand the budgeting implications for human rights. interventions within the overall context of a grant. For example, the Global Fund may request reductions in human resources to implement certain activities, or deprioritization/omission of enabling environment activities if overall grant funds have been reduced. In this case, robust explanations including job descriptions and evidence from various sources cited throughout this section should be provided in order to justify the inclusion of these interventions.