Measuring performance
For institutions like yours that hold dear a social mission, understanding changes in your clients' well-being is essential to demonstrating both outreach to people living in poverty and improvements in their lives. This is why, four years ago, two organizations — Freedom from Hunger and the Microcredit Summit Campaign — began a process to develop set of simple health outcome performance indicators, known as the Health Outcome Performance Indicators (HOPI), to help assess changes in client well-being over time.
The HOPI were tested by four microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India, the Philippines, and Peru and have been adopted by several COPHAM members in India. In 2016, we published an MS-Excel-based tool, the "Client Outcome Performance (COPE) Indicators Database," that will assist in collection and analysis of the HOPI survey — or the indicators of your choice. Learn more below.
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The Health Outcomes Performance Indicators (HOPI)
Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: How Microfinance Institutions Can Track the Health of Clients. Health Outcome Performance Indicators (HOPI) Project Report (2015)
For microfinance institutions (MFIs) with social missions, understanding changes in client well-being has become more important as MFIs are held to task to demonstrate both outreach to the poor and improvements in their lives. This paper has three primary goals: 1) to share experiences in selecting and pilot-testing a minimal set of health indicators among four MFIs, 2) to help MFIs choose among a set of tested indicators for monitoring client health outcomes over time, and 3) to summarize key recommendations for developing "standardized" client outcome monitoring indicators.
The following year, Freedom from Hunger and the Microcredit Summit Campaign, with support from Johnson & Johnson, developed the Client Outcome Performance indicators database.
The COPE Database
Client Outcome Performance (COPE) Indicators Database (2016)
This database file is aimed at helping microfinance institutions (MFIs) track and monitor their client outcome performance indicators. It is built to 1) compile clients' poverty levels using the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) developed by the Grameen Foundation and other user-defined data collected through a survey and 2) provide a general analysis as well as a detailed analysis of the possible correlations between indicators.
Learn more from First-Hand Users
New database tool can help you define and refine client outcomes
When I joined Freedom from Hunger several years back, I had the responsibility to carry on a decades-long commitment to research and evaluation. My predecessor, Barbara MkNelly, as well as my then-supervisor and president of Freedom from Hunger, Christopher Dunford, were already known for their contributions to the research efforts of the growing microfinance sector and the original set of SEEP/AIMS client assessment tools. Freedom from Hunger’s commitment to promoting easy-to-use and cost-effective tools also led to years of developing monitoring and evaluation systems for microfinance organizations that were coined as “Progress Tracking.” Fast-forward several years, and this is much better known as Social Performance Management.
Health Outcome Performance Indicators will help us “understand clients”
On March 4, 2015, in collaboration with the SEEP Network‘s HAMED working group, we co-hosted a webinar called “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: How MFIs Can Track the Health of Clients,” to discuss how microfinance institutions and their partners can measure client health and well-being. Our regional director for Asia-Pacific, Dr. D.S.K. Rao moderated the webinar. Joining us in the webinar were Bobbi Gray (Freedom from Hunger), Sandhya Suresh (ESAF Microfinance and Investments Pvt Ltd in India), and John Alex (Equitas Group and Equitas Development Initiatives Trust in India).
Promoting organizations
RESULTS Educational Fund | Sa-Dhan | Grameen Foundation | Freedom from Hunger India Trust