Monitoring and evaluating also helps you adapt if things are not going as expected. Since you will put a lot of time and effort into planning and delivering your project, it is important to know what is working, what is not, and why. This knowledge will help you make adjustments and get the project back on course. Ultimately, monitoring, evaluating and reporting will help your project succeed and assist you in communicating your successes.
We also use the information you provide to measure the effectiveness of our programs. We use evaluations of both the individual grants and the collective statewide outcomes to inform future directions for grant programs. This helps the NSW Government better understand the needs of community groups or organisations seeking the support of Trust funding and, in turn, this influences future funding decisions.
What you need to do
If you are awarded a grant you must complete and return the documents within 30 working days of receiving the Grant Agreement. We are currently redesigning many of our templates and they do vary depending on the funding program, (your grants administrator will advise you further).
You will also need to:
- submit progress reports throughout the life of your project
- submit a final report after the project concludes.
Preparing your project plan
The purpose of the plan is to help you map out what is required to complete a project and ensure success (please note the template used by many of our programs was formerly known as the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan or M&E Plan).
Before you can prepare your monitoring and evaluation project plan you need to define your objectives and the steps you will take to achieve them as you carefully plan your project. If you have a large grant then we would expect a more detailed plan than for a smaller grant.
You would have already included much of the information you need for preparing your plan in your grant application; so use this as a reference. If you get the planning right at the beginning, then running your project, collecting the data and reporting your progress should be simple.
Please note: Waste program grants have their project plan incorporated into their grant agreement, therefore they are not required to complete a separate monitoring and evaluation project plan.
When do I have to report?
You must submit progress reports periodically throughout the life of the grant, and submit a final report at the conclusion of the project. The timing for your reports will be as outlined in your grant agreement. Reporting templates can be found under the respective grant programs.