Namati’s strategy has evolved, and so has our understanding of impact. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we define impact and how our approach has changed in this cycle of impact reporting.
People who choose a career in monitoring and evaluation (M&E)—studying the impact of programs—are a special breed. They crave precision, clarity, and logic. They want to see the evidence behind decisions. They are, in short, nerds. I say this with confidence because I’m one of them. (In my wedding vows, I cited research on what makes marriages work. Jury’s still out on whether that was a good idea, but the marriage is thriving—perhaps just correlation.)
This precision-driven mindset leads to debates over terminology, definitions, and boundaries. Outcomes are different from impacts. Impacts are different from goals. And so on.
These debates surface in organizations’ attempts to categorize ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ beneficiaries—people who ‘benefit’ from an intervention in different ways. The intention behind this classification is good: donors want to understand the reach and significance of a program. But what does “direct benefit” really mean? Does it measure the degree of benefit? Or how closely someone interacts with program activities? Despite its well-intentioned origins, this terminology often confuses more than it clarifies.
Namati takes a different approach.
First, we avoid vague terms like “direct” and “indirect” beneficiaries. Instead, we talk about meaningful improvements in people’s lives. If a change is meaningful to a community, it matters to us.
Second, we avoid the term “beneficiaries,” which implies that an outside entity bestows benefits on a passive community. Communities are agents of change. Namati’s paralegals don’t simply provide assistance; they work alongside communities, helping them assert their rights and voice their priorities. Communities define what a meaningful resolution looks like and take action—collecting evidence, filing complaints, and engaging government officials—to achieve it.
Over the past year, we’ve refined our approach to identifying who should be counted in this group. Before diving into those changes, here are some examples of how we traditionally assess impact:
Recently, we made two key changes to how we calculate whose lives meaningfully improved, recognizing that justice solutions often create ripple effects beyond those directly involved.
1. Health Justice in Mozambique
Our advocates work with patients to address systemic breakdowns in healthcare delivery, tackling issues like discrimination, lack of privacy for stigmatized illnesses, and medication shortages. Until recently, we counted only those who sought care at facilities where advocates were active, estimating this number based on a small percentage of the surrounding population.
We’ve since realized that better, more dignified healthcare benefits an entire community, not just those who visit the facility. Access to improved care leads to longer life expectancy and better health outcomes. As a result, we now include the total catchment area population in our calculations.
2. Fair Carbon Deals and Land Rights in Kenya
Fair Carbon Deals and Land Rights in Kenya
Previously, we counted impact only when communities successfully negotiated fair lease agreements with companies. But there are meaningful milestones along the way.
For example, in Kenya, 27 communities engaging with the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project secured access to the agreement that governs the project, which is the world’s largest soil-based carbon project, spanning 1.9 million hectares. Gaining access to this agreement required persistence and creativity. The ability to access critical information about their own land was a victory in itself, and moving forward, we will count milestones like this as meaningful improvements in community justice.
With this post, we aim to provide more transparency into how we measure one key aspect of Namati’s impact: grassroots justice solutions. In the future, we hope to share more about how we document and assess systemic change and efforts to build community power.
If you’re still reading, congratulations—you may be an M&E nerd. We’d love to discuss and exchange ideas on how best to understand and document change. Feel free to reach out to me at michaelzanchelli@namati.org with your reflections, ideas, or even new research citations on what makes a marriage work.