The Good Enough Guide

Questions that help identify what is working and what is not often go unasked during an emergency response. They are left instead to evaluators. As a result, information that could inform decision-making and save lives is sometimes discovered only after a crisis is over.

One way of discovering the difference or impact a project is making is to ask the women, men, and children caught up in the emergency. For years NGOs have been promising to ‘be accountable’ to them: to seek their views and to put them at the heart of planning, implementing, and judging our response to their emergency.

In practice, that is a promise that has proved hard to keep. Acombination of factors – including lack of know-how, time, or staff, and the situation itself – too often make impact measurement and accountability no-go areas during emergency response.

In February 2006 field staff from seven international NGOs attended a workshop in Nairobi. They took a hard look at the reality of putting impact measurement and accountability into practice on the ground during an emergency. They agreed some core ideas or Basic Elements, shown on pages 1–3. This book, the tools, and the ‘good enough’ approach are the result.

The Good Enough Guide is intended for field-based project officers and managers. It aims to help them make impact measurement and accountability become part of the job. It draws on the work of international NGOs and inter-agency initiatives, including Sphere, ALNAP, HAP, and People In Aid. See page 55 for information about these initiatives.

The Guide does not replace the policies of individual NGOs or the common principles of inter-agency initiatives. It is not the last word on impact measurement and accountability. But, by sharing a few quick and simple approaches, The Good Enough Guide aims to help field-based staff ask two questions and use the answers to inform the work they do and the decisions they take:

What difference are we making?

How can we involve the women, men, and children affected by an emergency in planning, implementing, and judging our response?

How to use the Guide

You can read Sections 1–5 of the Guide separately or in sequence. Each Section includes links to suggested tools on impact measurement and accountability in emergencies. These tools are presented in Section 6.

Few of the tools are new. They have been adapted from the work of the Emergency Capacity Building Project and Humanitarian Accountability Partnership member agencies and from standard texts. They do not represent an exhaustive list. But the tools are collected here because field staff seldom have an opportunity to document or retrieve tools for impact measurement and accountability in the middle of an emergency response.

Remember that the ‘good enough’ tools are not blueprints. They are suggested rather than prescribed. Each can be used on its own or in conjunction with other tools. Use your own judgement, skill, and experience in deciding whether to use or adapt any tool.

Remember that field staff still need appropriate training, advice, and support.

Taking the ‘good enough’ approach does not mean being second best: it means using simple solutions rather than elaborate ones. Atool that is ‘good enough’ today can – and should – be reviewed tomorrow, in the light of needs, resources, or a security situation that has changed.

Last but not least, using the ‘good enough’ approach means selecting tools which are safe, quick, and easy to use in the context in which you are working. Questions to help test whether a tool is ‘good enough’ include:

• Can we use this tool without endangering field staff and the people affected by the emergency?
• Does it meet essential requirements in this context at this time?
• Is it realistic?
• Do we have the resources – time, staff, volunteers, and money – to use it?
• Is it useful for those applying it?
• Is it as simple as necessary?
• Have we referred to widely accepted humanitarian values, standards, and guidelines?
• Will it be ‘good enough’ tomorrow? When will we review our use of this tool?

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