This “Institutional and Organizational Analysis and Capacity Strengthening” guide was funded by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP), the single largest climate change initiative for smallholder farmers worldwide.
The purpose of this Guide is to support institutional and organizational analysis and strengthening (IOA/S) for design and implementation of programmes and projects.
Proposed users of the Guide
This Guide is primarily aimed at those responsible for initiating, designing, managing and facilitating the process of institutional and organizational analysis and strengthening at the IFAD COSOP, programme design and implementation levels. It is written mainly for IFAD country programme managers, IFAD staff and consultants. It may also be useful to analysts, designers, implementers and evaluators of development programmes, from government as well as the private and civil society sectors.
More broadly, this Guide may be useful for anyone interested in practical tools and approaches to guide analysis and the design of interventions aimed at institutional and organizational strengthening and rural poverty reduction.
Structure of the Guide
- The first section sets out the purpose, users and structure of the Guide, directions on how to use it, and some thematic considerations.
- Section two introduces some of the basic concepts and models used by the Guide, such as definitions of key terms, and a summary of the methodology used.
- Section three presents suggested steps and activities to be carried out during an institutional and organizational analysis at the COSOP and project/programme design stages. It also provides information related to the expected uses and results of the analyses, as well as advice regarding monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators and approaches.
- Section four presents a number of case studies that highlight information relevant to COSOP, design and implementation.
- Section five covers approaches and pointers regarding M&E for interventions designed to strengthen institutions and organizations and individuals.
- Section six presents case studies illustrating the overall practice of IOA/S and highlights of lessons learned from COSOP, design and implementation.
The Guide can be used in a number of ways, depending on the purpose and context of the analysis or strengthening activities being conducted. While this Guide is intended for design teams and peer reviewers at design stage, it is also expected that some of the insights from cases discussed in this Guide would be useful for supervision and implementation support; likewise, resulting lessons from these processes will feed into future iterations of this document. These can be used directly to plan and implement the IOA/S workflow. They point to specific tools that may be used as part of these steps and provide templates for information output.
You can download this guide for free here.
