Ethnic-Racial Equity in Education Grant: consultancy in learning, monitoring and evaluation

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Consultancy to support the design and implementation of an institutional strengthening grant for organisations led by Black, Indigenous and Quilombola people, funded by Imaginable Futures and Instituto Unibanco

Context

The Ethnic-Racial Equity in Education Grant was a joint initiative by Imaginable Futures and Instituto Unibanco to support, over three years, twenty organisations led by Black, Indigenous or Quilombola people working on ethnic-racial equity in education in Brazil. From the outset, the funders intended the grant to include a monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework suited to the realities of the selected organisations and to contribute to their institutional strengthening throughout the funding period.

The work was organised in two phases. The first, conducted between February and June 2024, focused on supporting the design of the grant, ensuring that monitoring and evaluation principles were embedded in the call for applications from the outset. The second phase, carried out between March and December 2025, involved the creation and application of an institutional development tracking tool with the twenty selected organisations, as well as the co-construction of an institutional development plan for each of them.

Approach

Across both phases, our work was guided by a culturally responsive and intersectional approach. In the first phase, we conducted listening sessions with the funders and with the three mentors involved in designing the grant — Black, Indigenous and Quilombola leaders — to understand what each party meant by learning, what their expectations were for the organisations to be selected, and what recommendations they had for a grant of this nature. We attended the meetings of the advisory council convened to support the grant's development and actively contributed to the drafting of its text, offering recommendations on how a monitoring and evaluation lens should be reflected in the requirements set out for applicant organisations. At the end of this phase, we delivered a synthesis document capturing the perspectives of all parties consulted, alongside a proposed accompaniment framework for the three years of the programme.

In the second phase, once the twenty organisations had been selected, we developed and applied an institutional development tracking tool with each of them. The tool, based on the work carried out in the first phase, was structured around five dimensions — financial sustainability, team structure, documentation and learning, communication of results, and networks and partnerships — and was applied by our team in individual sessions with each organisation, rather than through self-completion, in order to preserve responsiveness to each organisation's context. Inspired by evaluation rubrics but designed in a circular format, the tool sought to communicate, including through its design, that linear development across all dimensions was not expected. The first-year application was intended to serve as a snapshot, enabling organisations to reflect on their structures, practices and processes and to define their institutional development priorities for the upcoming years together with their teams.

Following these sessions, organisations were invited to develop, with our support, an Institutional Development Plan covering the three years of funding. This plan will inform the learning pathways offered to the selected group through the grant, as well as guide each organisation's strategic decisions. Our team also took part in collective spaces with the full group of selected organisations and collaborated with the organisation responsible for ongoing accompaniment in the following years.