How to budget for

MEAL?

Developed by Marije M. Nederveen, Capacity Development Officer

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning
Budgets – too much, too little

 Does your organisation

 Make a MEAL budget annually?
 Have MEAL staff funded?
 Who is responsible for the MEAL budget?
 When do you have ‘enough’ MEAL budget?
 When do you have ‘too little’?

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Budget for MEAL activities
think about…
 You look at:
 Project cycle & duration
 Local costs
 Donor requirements
 Oxfam’s commitment to MEAL: 5%
 Minimum requirements of Oxfam for MEAL (CAMSA)
 Type of intervention (which methodology?)
 # of project locations (regions, provinces, countries
etc)
Budget for MEAL staff think
about….
 Organisation’s staff: expert MEAL staff within the
organisation?
 Oxfam staff: expertise from Oxfam, for example
for capacity building by the Country office or
Oxfam International
 Consultants: Do you need to include fees for
consultants for evaluation or other external
advise?

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 When to budget?
Reflection on
budget
(effectivenes, 5. Closure, 1.
efficiency) Evaluation, Programme
Scale up identificati
and/or on
adjustmen
4. t 2.
Implement Design
ation and
Manageme &
Reflection on Design
nt through plannin budget!
implementation
budget
projects
3. g
Performance Fundraising
monitoring &
Contracting
Negotiate Page
budget with 6

donor
What will you budget?

How to budget
for MEAL

Costing for
MEAL

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Connecting logical framework
specifically to your budget
 Once a logical framework is developed the budget can
be attached to:
 Activities
 Outputs
 Outcomes
 This helps you to plan the exact budget
 This provides a performance monitoring framework

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both for your content monitoring as your financial
monitoring
Data
monitoring
plan Page
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What do we need to do?

 Do we need to develop a MEAL budget for our

project/program?
 Can we develop an example budget for future
projects/programs?

 What is the timeline we would to suggest for these

actions?
 Who will be responsible for what?

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What have you learned?

 Note for yourself

 What are the 3 most important things you take away from
this session?
 What are the 3 things you would like to know more about
and why?
 What is the first thing you will follow up on in your
organisation?

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COMMENTS or QUESTIONS?
Marije.Nederveen@oxfamnovib.nl