Our approach to MEL
Climate KIC’s approach to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
Climate KIC’s approach to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) is driven by a recognition that transformative climate action requires a constant cycle of discovery, experimentation, and adoption: we will need to test and learn by doing, building both our and others’ capability for continuous adaptation and self-transformation.
Climate KIC is part of a wider community of organisations putting MEL to work as an evolving element of transformative climate action. It is integrated in an organisational cycle of Portfolio Sensemaking and strategic decision-making.
Climate KIC’s Evaluation Frame
Our Evaluation Frame provides a robust lens through which we capture and synthesise MEL and impact data across the organisation, ensuring that evidence and insights are directly tied to portfolio sensemaking, strategic decision-making and adaptive learning. This is central to delivering on our mission of Transformation, With Urgency.
Beyond project-specific MEL, we leverage our Strategic Choices – ways in which we want to act in the world as a deliberate and effective systems player – as entry points for organisational learning about the difference we are making. A suite of evaluative tools – Rubrics assessments, Post Implementation Reviews, organisational indicators and Outcome Stories – help us draw out actionable insights within and across our thematic clusters on a regular basis. These in turn support organisational decision-making, planning and strategic direction. Critically, we seek to maintain flexibility in conducting evaluative Deep Dives into the frontiers of change and emergent patterns.
Using Outcome Stories to shape data collection, analysis and reporting on impact
Through 2024 and 2025, we are piloting and implementing an Outcome Stories methodology. This toolkit combines elements of established complexity-sensitive impact assessment but starts and ends with a compelling story arc. To harness the pull that stories exert on the human imagination, we combine robust quantitative and qualitative evidence and a purposive underlying MEL practice that feeds information forward into the story frame.
