Define monitoring and measures needs.

Start by defin­ing and pri­or­i­tiz­ing the infor­ma­tion you will need. Your needs might include:

Report­ing impact of your project or pro­gram to your orga­ni­za­tion. How is your orga­ni­za­tion track­ing and sum­ma­riz­ing impact across projects and pro­grams? How do part­ners and oth­ers report impact? Is there a need for report­ing in a com­mon “cur­ren­cy” for area impact­ed, types of impacts, degrees of impacts?

Report­ing to fun­ders or oth­er phil­an­thropic uses. What, if any, are the fun­ders’ require­ments? Is your project designed to be used as a ‘proof of con­cept’ to solic­it addi­tion­al fund­ing? If so, what proof will like­ly be required? What are the require­ments for report­ing progress on activ­i­ties and results such as tool devel­op­ment, ana­lyt­i­cal reports, etc.?

Influ­enc­ing key actors, includ­ing build­ing the evi­dence base for con­ser­va­tion. Is there a group whose behav­ior you are hop­ing to change? What type of evi­dence do they require? The best way to assess this is gen­er­al­ly to direct­ly ask mem­bers of this group. Addi­tion­al­ly, assess­ing how infor­ma­tion has led to changes in behav­ior in the past can pro­vide an under­stand­ing of the required qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of evi­dence. Note that one group of key actors is the con­ser­va­tion com­mu­ni­ty. Evi­dence that a strat­e­gy works is impor­tant to influ­ence broad­er adop­tion of the strat­e­gy by the con­ser­va­tion community.

Mit­i­gat­ing risk of neg­a­tive impacts and oth­er rep­u­ta­tion­al risks. Are there poten­tial, cred­i­ble neg­a­tive impacts to nature and peo­ple? Are there pub­lic promis­es for which proof of deliv­er­ing on these promis­es is required?

Mit­i­gat­ing legal risk (if applic­a­ble). What legal guar­an­tees, if any, are you respon­si­ble for? What evi­dence would be nec­es­sary to defend your orga­ni­za­tion in court