1. Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Innovations (MERLIN) Program What do you do in the ‘measuring impact’ space? Have you thought about how funders can better design and manage monitoring, evaluation, research and learning programs? How often do you hear funders or donors recognize their own challenges in this sector and tell the world what they don’t do well? What are some of the challenges you see in MERL?

2. MERLIN Design challenges: ●How might we foster increased development impact through improved and innovative tools for monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning? ●What are the cutting edge approaches to measuring impact, understanding complex development challenges and solutions, and using evidence to drive smart decision making and policy? ●How can we test our theory of change that increasing the use of STIP in development programming will lead to increased impact over time and bring us closer to reaching our common sustainable development goals? Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Innovations (MERLIN) Program

3. Through MERLIN, USAID is seeking solutions or promising new and innovative approaches…...for monitoring or evaluating hard-to-measure results of science, technology, innovation and partnership (STIP) and scale programming...for testing our theory of change that increasing the use of STIP in development programming will lead to increased impact over time and thus bring us closer to reaching our common sustainable development goals...to how USAID or other stakeholders structure evaluations and/or engage evaluators...to more quickly and effectively use M&E findings to enable rapid learning and adaptive management...for collecting, analyzing, or visualizing data on development programs

4. WHO? WHY?HOW? WHAT?

5. Where to now?

6. Discussion and Questions