FOR FUNDERS AND FOUNDATIONS
Your evaluation told you what happened. It did not tell you why it keeps happening.
Most evaluation holds a programme still and measures it. Activities delivered. Outputs counted. Targets compared. The report arrives at the end of a grant cycle, describes what was done, and rarely explains why the same problems return in the next one.
Nuvora Impact maps the dynamics around a programme before deciding what to measure inside it. The result is evidence that shows where to intervene, not just what to report.
WHAT WE HEAR FROM FUNDERS
"We fund good programmes. The evaluation confirms they worked. Then the same problem comes back. What are we missing?"
Usually what is missing is not more data. It is a map of the system the programme sits inside. A literacy programme can raise reading scores and still fail to change educational outcomes if the constraint is not pedagogy but household economics pulling children out of school. A standard evaluation would report the reading scores as a success. A systems-informed evaluation would show why the success did not hold.
Evaluation has good traditions for this. Developmental evaluation, realist evaluation and contribution analysis all ask what worked, for whom, and under what conditions. What is still rare in practice is a funder-side evaluation that begins with an explicit causal map of the system, then designs the methodology to test the links in that map.
That is where Nuvora Impact starts.
HOW WE WORK WITH FUNDERS
One flagship engagement and two that sit either side of it.
01
FLAGSHIP
Single-grantee systems-informed evaluation
Independent evaluation of programmes your grants support. We begin with a causal loop map of the dynamics surrounding the programme: what reinforces its outcomes and what works against them. The evaluation methodology is then designed to test the links in that map, not just the programme's own activity targets.
You receive an evaluation report shaped for the room it will be read in, the annotated causal map, and a findings session with your team. Your grantee receives the map and a debrief, so the evaluation leaves them with something rather than taking something.
Scope: 10 to 12 weeks. One programme
02
Portfolio learning synthesis
When the question is not "did this programme work?" but "what is this portfolio teaching us?". A desk-based synthesis across your existing evaluation reports, grantee documentation and monitoring data. We look for the barrier that appears across programmes that look different on the surface, and the conditions that create reinforcing loops in the grants that outperform. The output is a learning framework your team uses to decide where the next grant has the most leverage.
This is a synthesis of evidence you already hold, not new fieldwork across grantees. Where the synthesis surfaces a question that needs primary evidence, we say so and scope it separately.
Scope: 6 to 8 weeks . Designed for portfolios of 5 or more grantees.
03
Evidence strategy and MEL design
Before a grant is made, or in its first quarter, build the evidence infrastructure that makes systems-informed evaluation possible later. We work with the programme team to map the causal dynamics at the start: the assumptions the programme depends on, the reinforcing loops it needs to activate, and the balancing forces that could stall it. From that map we design the Theory of Change, indicator framework and data collection system, built to measure the links between variables rather than only the variables themselves.
This lowers evaluation cost downstream and produces evidence at endline that explains what happened, not just what was counted.
Scope: 4 to 6 weeks per grantee. Often bundled as a condition of grant.
THE APPROACH
What a causal map shows before the methodology is written.
Every programme sits inside a system of reinforcing and balancing dynamics. Reinforcing loops amplify what the programme is trying to do. Balancing loops constrain it. When an evaluation measures activities and outputs without mapping those dynamics, it can confirm a programme worked while missing the structural forces that will erode the outcome within a year.
A causal loop diagram makes those forces visible before the methodology is designed. It shows where the real leverage points are, which is often not where the programme's own logic model points.
The map determines what we measure. What we measure is shaped by the decision you need to make, not the data that is easiest to collect.
Simplified: a reinforcing loop (R) drives outcomes towards sustained change. A balancing loop (B) pulls against it. Standard evaluation measures the outcomes. Systems-informed evaluation maps both loops and measures the links between them.
THE DIFFERENCE
What changes when your evaluator has sat in your chair.
The brief gets sharper.
Most evaluators accept the brief as given. A former grant-maker knows which questions the brief is not asking, and raises them before the methodology is locked.
The findings are decision-shaped.
An evaluation can be methodologically sound and operationally useless. We structure every finding around a decision you can make: renew, restructure, scale, or stop. The causal map makes it clear which decision addresses the root cause and which addresses a symptom.
The evaluation sees the system, not just the programme.
Standard evaluation holds one programme and measures it. Systems-informed evaluation maps what reinforces it, what constrains it and what the programme cannot change alone. That is the difference between a report that says "this worked" and one that explains why it worked here but not there.
The grantee relationship is protected.
Evaluation creates tension between funder and grantee. A practitioner who has managed both sides of that relationship knows how to produce honest evidence without damaging the trust the programme depends on.
The report is not the product.
The product is the conversation that the report makes possible. We design deliverables for the room they will be read in: a board meeting, a grant committee, a grantee debrief. Format follows audience.
We start every engagement by mapping the dynamics your current evidence is not capturing. The scoping conversation identifies what those are. Tell us the programme or portfolio, the timeline, and what the evidence needs to do. We respond within one working day with a scoping outline.
START HERE
A 30-minute scoping conversation.
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No obligation. No pitch deck. Just the right question.
Where evidence meets purpose
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