Overview
The Strategic Framework Fund (SFF) was established by the UNITAR Board of Trustees in November 2018 as a flexible, pooled funding instrument to help UNITAR deliver on its mandate and achieve the objectives of the 2018-2021 strategic framework.
The purpose of the evaluation is to assess the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability of SFF-related programming; to identify any problems or challenges that the SFF has encountered; to issue recommendations, and to identify lessons to be learned on the SFF’s design, implementation, and management.
The evaluation employed a mixed methods approach which incorporated a desk review of project documentation, online survey and key informant interviews (including UNITAR directors, managers, the Executive Director, project beneficiaries, a donor and an implementing partner). In total, 47 allocations formed part of the evaluation scope based on the availability of documentation and the implementation phase of the projects.
The evaluation's main limitation is the small-scale nature of the projects and the cluster approach which did not allow the evaluation to engage in a project-specific focus. Additionally, only 8 projects allocations were analysed in-depth. Thirdly, the data collected from the surveys was of subjective nature and is based on participants’ perceptions. Moreover, the use of colour codes to rate the evaluation criteria imposes a degree of misrepresentation given the variation in the borderline aggregate scores. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic limited the evaluator’s ability to undertake field visits.
