Following a successful joint project on Sustainable Food Forests in 2022-23, we worked alongside staff from The Orchard Project to consolidate and simplify their approach to monitoring and evaluation (M+E) of their activities.

We spoke to members of staff about ongoing approaches to M+E, digested documents currently used to monitor activities, and then considered what a holistic and realistic new approach to M+E might be for the organisation.

Working closely with operational staff, we devised a new ‘logframe’, where the measuring of qualitative and quantitative project data can feed into assessing whether The Orchard Project is meeting its strategic goals. We also provided further guidance documents to help staff understand the purpose of monitoring and evaluation in general, and important things to consider when undertaking it.

The Orchard Project will now go ahead and experiment with the new framework - we hope it helps them better show the impact their programmes are making around the UK.