Impact of Interventions and knowledge (KB-11-004-003)

Innovation grants to farmer organisations, e.g. to increase value-adding activities, have impacts boh on economic and on organisational performance. LEI Wageningen UR develops a method to measure these impacts and to grasp the factors that influence the success of innovation grant schemes.

Based on earlier research on the agency dilemmas in collective marketing, LEI studies the impact of a grant fund in Bolivia that caters to economic smallholder organisations. Economic effects of these grants will mature only after some years. Organisational changes are often more immediate. To manage collective processing and marketing activities, the organisation needs to resolve new tensions between the individual and the collective interest, e.g. on price determinations, quality control, payment systems, etc. The capacity of organisations to handle these issues is a key outcome of capacity strengthening programmes funded by governments and donors.

Donors need to know the impact of their support activities. However, it is difficult to measure and attribute the impact of these interventions in the context where many other factors and actors are active, and in the absence of credible measures and methods for longitudinal and inter-organisational comparison. LEI develops methods to document the contribution of interventions in complex change processes and to develop appropriate measures that are meaningful to evaluate impacts.

Next to the evaluation of impact, the research is also directed to identify enabling factors that explain why the grants or capacity support works for some groups but not for others. This information is important to fine-tune the programmes and provides material for mutual learning between economic farmer organisations.