Checklist of Potentially Relevant Information

Monitoring and evaluation of an organization extends not only to performance, but to how or why an organization is more or less successful. Performance may be taken to be a function of: (a) internal variables, including both underlying philosophy and values, organizational structure, conduct and mode of operation; (b) external or contextual variables that have a direct bearing on the programme (political change, macroeconomic policy, the weather etc.) which enter the logical framework as risks of assumptions.

AGENCY STRUCTURE & BACKGROUND

  1. Origins, philosophy, values
  2. Legal status
  3. Supporting agencies
  4. Range and rough scale of services provided
  5. Growth performance
  6. Important periods of reorientation and reform

CONTEXT

  1. Area of operation (eg. agro-ecology, population density, infrastructure, macroeconomic conditions).
  2. Legislative and regulatory controls on operation.
  3. Socio-economic status of (potential) users (eg. income and wealth, numeracy and literacy, gender).
  4. Principal economic activities of (potential) users.
  5. Relevant social organization of (potential) users (traditional, political, religious, administrative).
  6. Other local suppliers of the same services (formal and informal).
  7. Other agencies providing complementary services, or with whom the agency collaborates closely.

CONDUCT

  1. Organizational structure
  2. Infrastructure (branches, transport, security, accounting and audit).
  3. Staffing (quality, quantity, incentives).
  4. Terms of deposit collection.
  5. Terms of lending (loan ceilings, interest rates, savings and collateral, repayment terms, disbursement mechanisms, other conditions, collective guarantees, links with past lending).
  6. Other financial services provided
  7. Other non-financial services provided.
  8. Working relations with other agencies.

PERFORMANCE

  1. Financial (accounting ratios, subsidy dependence, interest rate margins, unit transactions costs, repayment rates, risk exposure).
  2. Gross access (number, location and socio-economic status of users, type of financial services provided and loan portfolio composition).
  3. Net access (net growth or additionality in financial service provision).
  4. Economic impact (indebtedness, assets formation, skill acquisition, job creation, income generation, poverty reduction, food security, technical externalities such as resource depletion, pecuniary externalities such as market saturation).
  5. Social impact (individual skills and confidence, group cohesion and conflict, leadership and dependency, collective action).
Source:
Copestake, James, "Poverty-oriented Financial Service Programmes: Room for Improvement?" Savings and Development No. 4, 1995 XIX, pp. 417-435
Hari Srinivas - hsrinivas@gdrc.org
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