The Bind: How can charities do MEL minus the melodrama?
In this interview, we’re joined by Amy and Claire, Directors of Shephard & Moyes, who’ve spent years helping charities make sense of monitoring, evaluation and learning. We talk about the realities of building relationships with hard-to-reach audiences, why learning gets lost, and how charities can focus on what’s practical rather than perfect.
Key takeaways
- “Build it and they will come” rarely works.
- Small, realistic steps work better than perfect plans.
- Check whether you’re actually reaching the people you intended.
- Make learning usable. Insight only matters if it’s shared and acted on.
- Use AI to test ideas, but remember human judgement and conversations are still essential.
What are charities’ most common misconceptions about hard-to-reach audiences?
Claire Moyes (CM): The idea that if we build it, they will come – the hope that simply providing an opportunity will remove the barriers people face. Charities often underestimate just how much time and effort relationship-building takes. If you’re not currently reaching the people you want to reach, there’s usually a reason, and building interest and trust can be a slow process. Add in the pressures of short-term grant funding, and project targets can easily become unrealistic.
So while the charity might have unrealistic goals, funders may have them too?
CM: Yes – funders aren’t always close to the day-to-day realities of working in communities. In an ideal world, charities would explain when the goal isn’t realistic and what it would take to do it well, but that can be difficult when you need the funding.
Amy Shephard (AS): Although, this is changing with some major funders. Many of them now recognise these issues, but there’s still a tendency in the sector to stick with the same stance. Funders increasingly ask whether targets are realistic, but charities often feel they need to agree, even when the timelines or expectations are tight.
CM: Sometimes it’s because charities don’t recognise what they’re telling funders isn’t realistic. For example, a team might secure funding to bring new groups into a community programme, only to discover the venue is hard to reach and lacks basic facilities. When they finally invite people to take part, those practical gaps become real barriers – and the original plan suddenly feels unrealistic. Without hands-on experience of running that kind of activity, it’s easy to underestimate what people will actually need to participate.
What do charities need to do to start involving those hard-to-reach audiences?
CM: It often comes down to understanding what someone’s priorities are at that time. For some, taking part in a project is doable; for others, meeting basic needs – like putting food on the table – has to come first, which is completely understandable.
SM: A sports charity I’ve been working with has genuinely managed to reach those hard-to-reach audiences, running hyper-local consultation to shape a systems-change plan rooted in what the community actually needed. But it’s worth remembering that even with strong outreach, this work can be complex. Many of the people they reached were dealing with significant pressures where physical activity wasn’t the main barrier – day-to-day practical and health challenges were. The consultation surfaced wider economic realities beyond what their programme could address.
What changes are you seeing in the charity sector right now?
CM: There’s been a shift towards place-based working – understanding a community’s strengths and building on what’s already there, rather than arriving with a fixed project. It allows you to address a range of issues in a way that’s genuinely community-led and gives you time to build relationships with those furthest from the work and support them to move closer over time.
Where do you see opportunities for the charity sector?
AS: AI offers some genuinely useful opportunities. Ask it to design a walking-football session and it will highlight social interaction, a proper welcome and time to talk afterwards. AI makes that knowledge more accessible, which could speed up and strengthen project design.
CM: Of course, all the usual caveats apply. You can’t assume it’s telling the truth, and you still need to check sources and use your own judgement. But what AI does offer is access.
AS: Many people naturally focus on the activity itself when planning a project, rather than the wider support and steps that help make it work in practice. AI can help widen that thinking by surfacing practical insight about what actually gets people through the door – for example, that most people only take part if someone they trust has encouraged them.
What other MEL challenges exist in the sector?
CM: Organisational memory can fade quickly. Valuable learning often gets lost when staff move on, and even when insights are captured in evaluation reports, they’re not always carried forward – so people end up starting from scratch. Conversations help, but only for as long as they’re remembered, and many organisations simply don’t have the structures needed to share learning over the long term.
Can AI help with this issue?
CM: I tried an AI-driven MEL platform recently and, while it wouldn’t be appropriate for every context, it did use existing learning intelligently. That felt genuinely useful, because reports only matter if people know they exist and have the time to read and act on them, and short-term funded programmes often don’t allow for that.
AS: Tools that can search organisational knowledge present real opportunity, but there are practical barriers too. AI tools often give you a handful of free prompts, but paying for full access for every team member isn’t always financially viable for organisations. I was with a charity yesterday where the solution was to use the free version and get better at prompting. It’s pragmatic, but it shows the gap between possibility and feasibility. And on top of that, there can be skill gaps and concerns about what AI should access.
Putting AI aside, what other ways can this learning be embedded?
AS: Conversations matter. They’re often where learning really sticks – far more than a report sitting in a folder. And, despite everything we’ve said about AI, those human conversations stay with people long after they’ve changed roles or moved on to a new organisation. That’s why, in all our contracts, we build in Learning to Action workshops to help teams reflect on the findings and turn them into clear, practical next steps.
If charities could make just one change to the way they approach MEL, what would it be?
CM: Do something and then use the learning. Work out what you want to understand, ask a few simple questions, and look at what you find. Once you start, you’ll see whether you asked the right questions and whether the information is useful. If it is, keep going; if not, tweak it and try again. Big change is hard, so focus on small, achievable steps, rather than perfection.
AS: I think linked to that, the really simple starting point is: are you reaching the people you set out to reach? It’s such a basic question, but so many organisations never quite answer it. Being able to answer that one simple question can make a huge difference.
If you’d like MEL support on a future project, get in touch with Shephard and Moyes. You can also subscribe to updates on their online training platform, due to launch later this year.
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