our Monitoring & Evaluation

Tracking Actionable Impact to Strengthen Community Resilience

At Climate Cardinals, we are committed to ensuring that our work — from translating climate information to empowering youth leadership — drives tangible, community-level resilience.

Our internal monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems track impact across all programs, align with strategic goals, and ensure we remain accountable to the communities we serve.

Fiscal year 2025 marks a major evolution: we are transitioning from "reach" metrics to "change" metrics to better capture meaningful outcomes.

  • Reach metrics track how many people we engage (e.g., participants, views, resources distributed).

  • Change metrics measure the difference our work makes (e.g., shifts in knowledge, behavior, leadership, and resilience).

This evolution ensures we focus not only on reach, but on the depth and quality of our impact.

We plan to release the full set of strategic metrics we are tracking, along with an update on our performance, in our annual impact report in November 2025.

Adaptive Management

Driving Impact Through Learning, Feedback, and Strategic Alignment

Our approach to M&E is grounded in continuous learning, real-time feedback, and a strong alignment with our five-year strategic plan. We focus on:

  • Strategic Target-Setting: Using a balanced scorecard to set five-year impact targets.

  • Annual Revisions: Adjusting targets based on program learning, community feedback, and external changes.

  • Ongoing Monitoring: Monthly progress checks, a mid-year review, and a full analysis after the annual report.

  • Continuous Learning: Regular feedback from grassroots partners, chapters, fellows, and volunteers to strengthen programs and refine metrics.

Program Monitoring Systems

Grassroots Translation Partnerships

  • All grassroots partners submit annual impact reports measuring how translated materials have supported resilience, adaptation, advocacy, and education.

  • We plan to introduce QR code feedback forms, enabling end-users to share directly how translated information was used.

Chapters Program

  • Our 150+ youth-led chapters meet quarterly (and soon monthly at the regional level) to coordinate and share learning.

  • Chapters submit impact and feedback reports twice a year focused on localized education, mobilization, and resilience-building.

Youth Fellowship Program

  • Fellows submit biannual reports highlighting leadership development and community engagement projects.

  • We are building an alumni community to enable 2-, 5-, and 10-year follow-ups tracking long-term leadership and impact.

Dashboards, Data Transparency, and Real-Time Reporting

Building Accessible, Live Impact Tracking

  • We are developing a live internal dashboard to track real-time progress across translations, youth leadership, chapters, and partnerships.

    • The dashboard will be accessible to all core team members to drive data-informed decision-making.

    • Auto-generated monthly reports will support program leads and senior leadership in monthly strategy reviews.

  • After internal refinement, we plan to publicly share key dashboard data on our website to strengthen transparency and accountability.

  • We are committed to presenting our impact in accessible, easy-to-understand formats through plain language, visual storytelling, and clear data visualizations.

Internal Reporting Cycle

Aligning Strategy, Data, and Growth

  • Monthly Monitoring: Progress against balanced scorecard targets reviewed monthly.

  • Mid-Year Review: A mid-year analysis strengthens alignment and informs adjustments.

  • Annual Impact Report: Consolidates outputs, outcomes, and key learnings to guide strategic planning.

Measuring Community Resilience

Recognizing Complexity and Investing in Future Capacity

We recognize that community resilience is complex and multifaceted — and difficult to measure through simple metrics alone. Currently, our primary tools include partner surveys, chapter impact reports, and fellowship evaluations focused on leadership development and community activation.

As we grow our team and technical capacity, we plan to expand and strengthen our evaluation frameworks, exploring new ways to assess long-term resilience outcomes more comprehensively.

We are committed to iterating in partnership with thought leaders, researchers, and frontline communities, ensuring that our measurement approaches remain responsive, community-informed, and aligned with evolving best practices.