Grant-Making

Monitoring and Evaluation

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

• Workplan tracking measures (WPTM) are qualitative milestones and/or input or process measures to measure 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 covered through programme reviews and not necessary for inclusion in the PFs of regional grants that seek exclusively to strengthen legal or policy environments, and community systems. However, impact and outcome indicators may be included for certain grants based on agreement of the Global Fund and the Principal Recipients (PR) (please confirm with your Global Fund Country Team).
• Programme reviews or evaluations are an important part of assessing progress against grant objectives, in particular for grants related to strengthening legal and policy environments and community systems. Country Offices (COs) are encouraged to ensure that adequate budgets are allocated to fund a baseline and endline evaluation (and midline where appropriate) and, should savings be available, a midterm review as well. The UNDP Global Fund/Health Implementation Support Team can be requested to provide examples of/support development of terms of reference (TORs) for programme reviews.

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’ – much of the most strategic results will be assessed through the evaluations.
• 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 (refer: UNDP Capacity Development Toolkit: Critical Enablers) should be provided in order to justify the inclusion of these interventions.