Learning from What We Know: How to improve evaluation synthesis for humanitarian organisations

Although the volume of evaluations published by humanitarian actors has increased tenfold between 2007 and 2017 in this resource library, the evaluation system still struggles to provide evidence about collective performance of the humanitarian sector.

Evaluation synthesis provides one option for building information about response-wide performance. They aggregate findings from a defined range of evaluations using a specific analytical framework and typically seek to provide digestible lessons for senior management by drawing on findings from multiple projects and interventions. In short, they help us to learn from what we know.

This paper provides guidance on when to do an evaluation synthesis and how to do it well.