Mission Metrics: An Agency-Wide Measurement Approach for Understanding Emergency Response

This document is an outline of the key points given during a presentation by Barbara Willett and Michael Wallace at the 28th ALNAP meeting. 

Like many humanitarian organizations, Mercy Corps continually reflects on its effectiveness in emergency response. With ‘Mission Metrics’ – a performance management system designed to bring program-level M&E results into an agency-wide framework – we have an evidence-based system for understanding all our programs, which is critical to strategic planning, policy formulation, and improving operations. By aligning program indicators with mission-based themes, we can assess results through our mission lens, rather than as isolated program responses, and share this analysis with senior leaders as part of strategic review and planning. Mission Metrics is still evolving, but it has become a credible source of data and learning, particularly for our emergency response programs. Focused on evidence of change (outcomes), and not just reach (outputs), it has helped us review and realign our emergency response, and improved our overall efforts to monitor and evaluate our work.