ISF helps the Australian Volunteer Program to learn about its work

With the Institute for Sustainable Futures’ (ISF) focus on creating real and meaningful change, a partnership with the Australian Volunteer Program — which works to provide volunteers across 26 lower- and middle-income countries — is a natural connection.

As part of its strategic outlook, the Australian Volunteers Program specifies three thematic impact areas set out by the Australian government: inclusive economic growth; human rights; and climate change, disaster resilience and food security. Establishing how the program can use the thematic impact areas to show its contribution to international development is where ISF came in, after winning the tender to conduct a series of evaluations.

Finding a framework that works

“We commissioned ISF to carry out research on programs across our three thematic areas and the mapping of our portfolio program against those areas,” explains Jake Phelan, monitoring, evaluation and learning manager from the Australian Volunteers Program.

...we can work from what the organisation does in their head office right down to the development impact – improvement in people’s lives and livelihood.

– Dr Keren Winterford, ISF

Dr Keren Winterford, the research director for the project that won the tender, says ISF was ideally placed to work on this project. “From our perspective, we have a strong team, who had experience with the Australian Volunteers Program, and we also have strong evaluation perspective, with focus on development effectiveness. And we can work from what the organisation does in their head office right down to the development impact – improvement in people’s lives and livelihood [in-country].”

This initial formative evaluation included quantitative data analytics, key informant interviews, and document review around the thematic impact areas. “We created a definition of what these three impact areas might look like and identified sub themes under them,” explains Winterford. Taking into account what the Australian Volunteers Program was already doing, as well as other resources like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and categorisations that the program was using from the OECD Development Assistance Committee, the team fleshed out descriptions of these important impact areas.

This evaluation established a robust partnership between ISF and the Australian Volunteers Program. “When we started we discussed partnership principles – we were keen to consider what it meant working in a partnership,” adds Phelan. “Taking time to develop these personal relationships and having regular progress meetings have been very useful and kept things on track.”

Deep dive discoveries

The next part of the project was to conduct three summative ‘deep dive’ evaluations that each took one of the Australian Volunteers Program’s thematic areas and explored these themes within a specific region.

Following on from the mapping exercise and assessing the existing footprint of programming of the Australian Volunteers Program, the team looked at inclusive economic growth in Indonesia, human rights in South Africa, and climate change, disaster resilience and food security in the Pacific.

These evaluations were carried out through document review and key informant interviews with key stakeholders in each country or regional context, notably, Partner Organisations (POs), people who benefited from the work of these organisations, volunteers and local (in-country) and Melbourne-based Australian Volunteers Program staff. Due to COVID-19, the impact evaluations were carried out remotely, using Zoom and phone meetings to hold key informant meetings and carry out ongoing communications with the Australian Volunteers Program. “We did have that strong support from the Monitoring and Evaluation Learning team. They were really instrumental in providing links with who we engaged with in each of those different country contexts,” says Winterford.

ISF — making a difference

After this two-part project, ISF has played a part in the Australian Volunteer Program’s own learning about its program and contribution. “The evaluations have informed some discussions around the program’s strategic thinking and working in different thematic areas,” says Phelan. “'It's helped build trust with the Australian government, volunteers, potential volunteers and our partner organisations, and added to the overall credibility of the program.” Phelan also notes that the Australian Volunteers Program had “confidence in the validity of the product from ISF and its technical expertise” and also the communications provided, which play a vital role. “The reports were well written and suitable for multiple audiences, like government and program managers . This is important in getting key messages across.”

In a nutshell, Phelan says the partnership has been very productive. “[It] has allowed us to develop stronger working relationships for us to improve on what we are doing.”

There’s also some new work for ISF on the horizon. “We recommended that the Australian Volunteers Program upskill on climate change integration,” says Winterford. “And following that, ISF has supported in that work.”

For both ISF and the Australian Volunteers Program, there are more pathways ahead for the future of volunteering.

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