Designing & Implementing a 4-year Foundation-Wide MEL Framework
📍 Client: Elevate Prize Foundation
📍 Location: HQ in Miami, FL (global portfolio of grantees)
📍 Duration: 2021-2025
The Challenge
The Elevate Prize Foundation (EPF) tapped I2I to develop and implement a strategic MEL Framework as it was just getting their grantmaking off the ground. EPF is on a mission to “Make Good Famous” by providing unrestricted funding and visibility support (marketing, branding, storytelling) to social impact leaders worldwide. As an early-stage foundation, MEL supported EPF to validate their Theory of Change, use data to design effective programs, measure impact across diverse grantees, and refine its funding strategy.
Our Approach
I2I developed and implemented a custom Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework tailored to the foundation’s unique mission. This included:
✔ Co-creating a Foundation-wide Theory of Transformation and program-level Theories of Change
✔ Developing data collection tools to capture metrics across programs
✔ Regularly collecting a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to help the Foundation make decisions and measure their impact
✔ Building an iterative learning process to continuously refine the foundation’s impact strategy
The Impact
🚀 Increased clarity on programmatic impact, enabling data-driven decisions
📊 Streamlined data collection across a diverse portfolio of grantees and multiple programs, focusing on Elevate’s unique value
💡 Strengthened the foundation’s brand and narrative, enhancing visibility
🔄 Ongoing iteration of the MEL framework, ensuring adaptability as the foundation evolves
🎯 What Makes This Different?
Over four years, the MEL framework evolved alongside the organization, helping Elevate Prize Foundation ground its growth in strategic learning. Impact measurement helped Elevate refine their narrative and strategy, and maximize impact for their grantee partners.
Don’t just take it from us — see what their CEO, Carolina García Jayaram, has to stay about working with I2I:
“I2I has been with us since the first days of Elevate, and because of their awesome talent, open minds, creativity, responsiveness and collaborative spirit, we’ve been able to learn and shape a truly innovative and uniquely impactful prize program. Our winners feel safe, heard and supported which is why we are able to receive rich and meaningful data with which to evolve the foundation. This wouldn’t be possible without the open hearted and thoughtful approach by this team.”
— Carolina García Jayaram, CEO, Elevate Prize Foundation