At Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), our Right-Fit Evidence Unit advises funders and implementers on their approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to help them achieve greater impact. When funders seek guidance on how to support their grantees in developing and scaling up effective solutions, we often encourage them to take a different, more adaptive approach. Toward this end we have created the Stage-Based Learning Framework to align funders’ reporting and evaluation expectations with programs’ needs as they mature. The approach cuts out unnecessary monitoring and evaluation activities and allows learning needs to evolve as interventions progress toward scaling.

In the Winter 2025 edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, IPA's Loic Watine (Chief Research & Policy Officer) and Lucy Rimmington (Director, Right-Fit Evidence) wrote about the Stage-Based Learning Framework and explained how, to achieve impact at scale, funders should expect different monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities as programs mature.

Read the full article on the SSIR website.