The report of the above-mentioned evaluation was discussed at a meeting attended by all in-house partners concerned (PD, ED, OE and NGOs focal points) on 7 July 2000. The partners agreed on the following main findings, recommendations, and time bound actions for their implementation:

Overview of major findings

The ECP has made valuable contribution to enhancing IFAD NGO operational partnerships and through this NGO Government partnerships, to enlarging the range and numbers of IFAD's NGOs partners, to increasing institutional understanding of NGOs operations and to increasing the mutual confidence in collaboration. It has also increased institutional exposure to participatory approaches for poverty alleviation and helped in their promotion and internalisation during the implementation of IFAD projects. The NGO annual consultations held with support from ECP grants have provided feedback to IFAD on its relation with NGOs and helped in defining possible usage of NGOs advocacy role to strengthen in-country pro-poor policy dialogue.

Overall, the effectiveness of the programme in pilot testing innovative approaches as a basis for IFAD investments and in generating and storing useful knowledge about rural poverty alleviation have been below expectations. During the past 12 years the ECP grants covered a wide range of operational collaboration with NGOs. Within this range the priority given to pilot testing innovations for upscaling/replication was not commensurate with programme's objectives. While a number of strategic elements are no doubt implicit in the current IFAD/NGOs relations the lack of a coherent strategic framework that consolidate, prioritise and amplify these elements have been partly responsible for this. The Programme faced, in addition, a number of constraints that affected its performance in this area. Stronger emphasis on "pilot testing" innovations, simplifying and streamlining existing approval procedures, strengthening the incentive framework for innovations, increasing the upper limit for individual grants are all feasible reorientation measures that can enhance programme's effectiveness in providing a basis for upscaling/replicating promising innovations.

Notwithstanding the above, the Evaluation identified examples of ECP projects which recorded remarkable achievements in pilot testing and replicating innovative institutional approaches. This indicates the potential of the programme in this area. While there are few other instruments at IFAD's disposal to capture and learn from innovations, the ECP due to its specific characteristics presents a particularly good potential that should be exploited.

The NGO/ECP was undeniably relevant to IFAD's agenda and strategy in 1988. The Programme remains potentially very relevant to IFAD's vision and corporate strategy for 2000 and beyond. In 2000 more than ever before, the Fund is increasingly viewing its key role as that of innovator and knowledge institution as evident in the Report of the Consultation to Review the Adequacy of Resources Available to IFAD 2000-2002. The relevance and contribution of the ECP can reach its potential if the Programme is placed and operated within an explicit and coherent IFAD strategies on NGOs and innovations.

In view of the above, the following recommendations and implementation plan were agreed upon:

Agreed upon recommendations and implementation plan

Recommendations of strategic nature

Developing a Strategy for IFAD/NGOs Collaboration: IFAD should capitalise on its overall experience with NGOs, the results of the present evaluation, successive IFAD/NGOs consultations, and other relevant in-house work to consolidate/formalise existing strategic elements and develop a coherent IFAD/NGO strategy. This will help to maximise future benefits from the NGO/ECP. IFAD's NGO strategy would need to cover: the goal and priority objectives of IFAD's collaboration with NGOs, given the Fund's vision, strategy and the recommendations of the Consultations on the Fifth Replenishment; types of NGOs that IFAD should work with and criteria for selecting partners; main areas, activities and issues for collaboration (e.g. innovations, operations, policy advocacy, knowledge generation); modalities of cooperation and respective emphasis; institutional set up within IFAD for overseeing IFAD/NGOs cooperation; role of government and the private sector; constraints to effective partnerships and ways these can be overcome or circumvented.

• Implementation Plan: ED/NGO unit to organise the preparation of the strategy in close consultation with PD and OE and with the support of external consultants.

Stronger emphasis on pilot/testing innovations: ECP focus and activities should be reoriented to reflect IFAD's corporate/ strategic emphasis on innovation and learning hence pilot testing for replication and upscaling. The ECP can and should serve clearly this priority. It is recommended that resource allocation among ECP grants takes this aspect explicitly into consideration. The practical implication of this is that more weight is given to piloting and testing innovative approaches in identifying initiatives for ECP support. This should be combined with supporting NGOs advocacy role to enhance the Fund's policy dialogue in favour of the poor.

Implementation Plan: PD and ED Management.

• Time of delivery: 2001 and beyond.

Increasing the upper limit on individual grants: The upper limit of the ECP individual grants should be immediately increased to at least USD 100,000 with provision for periodic revision and adjustment. The potential and strategic relevance of the NGO/ECP for IFAD may require increasing its aggregate importance vis-à-vis IFAD TAGs at a certain point in the future. This issue can be investigated in conjunction with the formulation of IFAD's strategy for grants assistance and IFAD's strategy for cooperation with NGOs.

• Implementation Plan for increasing grants upper limit: ED/PD/OE Working Group on NGO/ECP Procedures.

Recommendations of procedure/ implementation nature

Streamlining ECP procedures and systematising reporting: The operational procedures need to be streamlined and shortened in order to ease CPMs work load and not to undermine the effective implementation of ECP pilot projects. The evaluation team endorsed many of the recommendations of the IFAD Working Group on NGO/ECP procedures and provided in writing to the Working Group Members (March 2000) a number of additional recommendations and comments. Furthermore, effective guidance is needed for NGOs to ensure that they provide IFAD with needed information in a usable and systematic form. The Working Group recommendations have already made major strides in this direction. In addition, simple guidelines and/or a user friendly systematic format for reporting at mid-term and completion should be developed and provided to the NGOs.

• Implementation Plan: ED/PD/OE Working Group on NGO/ECP procedures to finalise recommendations taking into consideration the additional input by the Evaluation.

Enhancing ECP programme oversight and technical backstopping: Given the time constraints of CPMs coupled with support and supervision needs of most grant recipient NGOs, IFAD could review alternative ways of providing additional technical backstopping, supervision and coordination to the programme. The goal would be to improve the quality of ECP grant projects, their links to each other and to IFAD investments, and the learning opportunities. The Evaluation has provided a number of alternatives (e.g. the use of electronic means to provide NGOs with information, answer their queries, link them with each other and resolve problems; the use of in-country resource groups for ECP implementation support and supervision, …etc.), but these need further review and discussion between PD and ED staff and management.

Making ECP Information Accessible to All IFAD Staff: One way this could be done is through the IFAD NGO database established in ED by the NGO Unit. While this database has great potential in experience and knowledge collection, storage and dissemination, it will not achieve its full potential unless shared by all IFAD staff. At present a read-only copy of this Data Base has just been made available to all staff. This read only access, however, should constitute the first step in a process that would, at the end, lead to an interactive corporate database whereby all interested staff could extract and incorporate data. It is important that such transition takes place as soon as possible. Such institution-wide database requires relatively little effort or expense in installation, but concerted systematic efforts for its implementation and management.

• Implementation Plan: ED/NGOs Unit and MM.

Capturing lessons and establishing learning dissemination channels: The ECP effectiveness and its knowledge contribution, can be greatly enhanced by a few fairly simple structural improvements. These include: a more systematic efforts by PD, OE and ED in capturing lessons from ECP projects (this will be greatly helped by regular and systematic reporting and consequent inclusion of relevant information in the NGO Data Base); an NGO/ECP website, or, a page in the existing IFAD website; periodical case studies publication; incorporation of ECP information and lessons in IFAD regular publications; informal meetings at IFAD when NGO staff visit or on general ECP experiences presented by CPMs etc.

Ensuring More ECP Project Evaluation: OE evaluation of ECP projects should be done systematically whenever there is evaluation of the IFAD loan project to which it is linked. When a sufficient number of such evaluations materialises, reporting should be done on an aggregate basis. This should help in capturing and disseminating lessons from the ECP.

• Implementation Plan: OE/PD.