What MEL Means for Social Enterprise: A Chat with Bean Voyage

As Learning and Evaluation partner of choice for organisations large and small across the world, at I.G. Advisors, we’re very familiar with some of the key challenges and pain points when it comes to understanding the social and environmental impact of a project. 

In our work designing grantmaking and investment strategies for funders, there are a number of areas where our partners commonly need guidance, including: 

• Wanting to conduct appropriate due diligence and manage risk, while also ensuring the application process is accessible and proportionate;

• Needing to understand the impact of their partners’ work and the return on investment, while also wanting to avoid overly burdensome reporting requirements; and, 

• Trying to establish trusting, flexible relationships with partners while also being accountable to internal stakeholders (e.g. Boards, investors, etc.,) and needing to follow rigorous internal processes.

Among the charities and social enterprises we work with, there’s also a clear pattern in terms of their needs and experiences:

• Needing additional capacity to support extensive monitoring and evaluation requirements and having to tailor their reporting to meet different funder expectations;

• Requiring headspace and guidance for embedding learning within their organisation so their services remain relevant and effective, when the pressure is to constantly firefight and prioritise immediate service delivery; and,

• Wanting to evaluate in a value-aligned way, prioritising impact metrics that are meaningful for the organisation and its communities, which may be different to what funders want to measure. 

Social enterprises have a particularly interesting relationship with Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) as they need to capture both the financial and social/ environmental impact of their work, and speak to a wide range of potential funders and investors. I recently had the pleasure of chatting to Abhinav Khanal, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Bean Voyage, to explore this further. 

Photo credit: Bean Voyage

Caitlin: Hello! Can you please introduce Bean Voyage to our readers in 1-2 sentences? 

Abhinav Khanal: Bean Voyage is a feminist social enterprise with a mission to build thriving businesses with smallholder women coffee farmers in Latin America. We achieve this through the Care Trade Model - a bundle of services consisting of training, seed funds, peer mentorship and global market access. As of 2022, we have served 920 smallholder women coffee farmers, channelling over $50,000 in micro-grants to support farmer-led, resilience projects, while generating over half a million in farm gate revenue through market sales.

How, if at all, is MEL for social enterprise different to MEL for other organisations such as charities?

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) for social enterprise is different to MEL for charities because the return on investment (ROI) and impact of the work needs to balance both social and financial impact. In contrast, for a regular charity, the ROI is heavily focused on the social impact of a program. 

Social enterprises are not driven by profits, but by the ability to continue growing work in a sustainable and financially independent way. For us, at Bean Voyage, this means that we spend time balancing two metrics – on the one hand, we are measuring how our farmers are building thriving businesses, and on the other hand we are looking at the growth we are seeing in the coffee supply chain (sales, return of customers, profit margins, etc.,).

“Social enterprises are not driven by profits, but by the ability to continue growing work in a sustainable and financially independent way.”

What, if any, differences have you seen between what impact means for grantmaking funders, versus what impact means for social and impact investors? 

We are noticing a shift in the sector where many grantmakers/foundations are now establishing social and impact investing arms themselves and starting to explore what ‘impact’ means across these different strands of their work. 

Generally speaking, both types of funder (grantmakers and investors) have a similar end goal, but their preferred path to reaching that impact goal can look slightly different. Grantmakers tend to be more focused on community development as a way to reach impact goals, whereas investors are more focused on market-driven solutions. 

How, if at all, do you balance funder and investor demands for evidence of impact, with the data and learning that is most useful for Bean Voyage?

Balancing the demands of different stakeholders can be challenging. Some may request measurements that don't quite align with our core values. In general, we tend to establish clear expectations around data and monitoring requirements from the very beginning so there are no surprises. We also introduced a quarterly report format to keep partners updated without having to curate a specific report for each funder. 

“Balancing the demands of different stakeholders can be challenging. Some may request measurements that don't quite align with our core values.”

Do you have a worst experience of MEL? 

Our worst MEL experience was when we were asked to upload a budget with a breakdown of every single expenditure (with receipts) spent that year outside the project scope, because the funding came into the same bank account with other income/expenses. The project was worth $22,000 and we had to spend over 15 hours gathering and uploading receipts, and filling out the template for expense reporting. Reporting can be a heavy lift for a smaller team.

Who is your MEL hero?

One of our MEL heroes is MiiR – a lifestyle brand with a social and environmental mission. They celebrate success, seek feedback, and identify opportunities to continue supporting your work and fundraising. 

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about your approach? 

We are especially proud of our Thriving Business Indicator project, which has allowed us to balance quantitative indicators of impact such as income, with qualitative indicators such as stress levels, pride in business, etc. Learning is also a cornerstone for us – stories from participants in our Women-Powered Coffee Summit go beyond what surveys alone can capture.

For any questions or advice related to monitoring, evaluation and learning at your organisation, please contact caitlin@ig-advisors.com or book a quick 30-mins chat here.