This toolkit distills the lessons, methods, and practical resources developed through RF MERL into a step-by-step guide for integrating rapid learning throughout the program cycle. It helps users identify key uncertainties, generate evidence using right-fit methods, and apply those findings to improve program design and implementation before opportunities are lost. Rather than waiting until the end of a project to evaluate results, the toolkit shows how to create ongoing feedback loops that support timely, evidence-informed decision-making.

Originally designed for USAID staff and implementing partners, the toolkit is also relevant for governments, donors, researchers, and development organizations seeking to strengthen adaptive management and learning. In addition to practical guidance, it includes decision trees, worksheets, facilitation guides, planning templates, and real-world examples that can be adapted to a wide range of sectors and contexts.

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Alethea is a senior program manager at Results for Development, where she leads monitoring, evaluation and learning within the Innovation team. She is also a specialist in gender equity, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI), and helps ensure a comprehensive inclusion lens throughout the Innovation team’s work. Collectively, she works to ensure that innovative approaches bring about equitable impact and are measured and learned from in ways that benefit the change agents involved and the wider ecosystems.

She has worked as a researcher, grant manager and technical expert on public health and gender equality, often with a focus on sexual and reproductive health. She has been a thought leader on menstrual health and has provided expert advice to multiple stakeholders — including UNFPA, ActionAid Malawi, Plan International, AmplifyChange and the Aga Khan Foundation — shaping policy and generating direct impact. For example, she recently guided the Aga Khan Foundation in Uganda to pilot and scale a first-of-its-kind menstrual cup project that produced tangible quantitative uptake results as well as rich qualitative insights. Throughout her work, Alethea has focused on bridging the gap between research and implementation, emphasizing how to capture actionable insights that drive tangible changes responding directly to localized problems.

Before joining R4D, she worked as an independent consultant, providing technical advice on monitoring, evaluation and learning to multiple INGOs and international development actors, including UK Aid Match. From 2020 to 2024, she was a senior technical expert in gender and social inclusion at MannionDaniels, serving on the senior management team. Her responsibilities included working directly with donors such as FCDO, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNFPA and cross-donor partnerships such as the Global Evidence in Education Advisory Panel to ensure quality results and impact measurement within education, health and climate programming.

Alethea holds a master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a master’s degree in Middle East studies from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Exeter.

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This white paper, “Measurement and Learning for Catalytic Programs in the Development and Humanitarian Sectors” defines catalytic impact as the sustainable improvements in people’s lives that result from systems change or replication at scale, rather than from direct interventions. It presents a practical framework for how organizations can measure, learn from, and strengthen these types of indirect, system-level effects.

What’s Inside

The paper, co-authored by individuals from R4D, CARE, and PSI, distills learning from two global convenings of organizations that fund, deliver, and evaluate catalytic programs and draws lessons from four case studies across health, housing, and agriculture. It introduces five guiding principles for measurement and learning in catalytic work:

• Select right-fit, credible, mixed methods that balance rigor with feasibility.
• Adopt locally owned and user-centered approaches that reflect participants’ priorities.
• Generate evidence for a defined purpose and use, tailored to decision-making needs.
• Approach measurement with a learning focus to support adaptation and improvement.
• Be iterative, innovative, and adaptive in methods, analysis, and use of data over time.

Why It Matters

Catalytic programs seek to influence complex systems through partnerships, scaling, and innovation. Traditional monitoring and evaluation methods are not designed to capture these indirect, long-term effects. This white paper calls for a shift toward adaptive, learning-oriented measurement practices that can illuminate how catalytic change unfolds and how organizations can better contribute to lasting, locally led impact.

Key Recommendations

To advance measurement and learning for catalytic programs, the paper offers targeted recommendations for implementers, donors, and the broader catalytic work community, emphasizing the need for organizational buy-in, realistic budgeting for measurement, investment in innovative approaches, and the creation of a shared community of practice.

Explore the full paper in the download link above.

Author Contact Information

• Katie Bowman – kbowman@r4d.org
• Seth McGovern – smcgovern@psi.org
• Caitlin Shannon – cataspencer@gmail.com (former CARE)

Suggested Citation:

Bowman, Katie; McGovern, Seth; Shannon, Caitlin. (2025). A White Paper on Measurement and Learning for Catalytic Programs in the Development and Humanitarian Sectors. CARE, PSI, R4D.

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Dr. López Hernández is a senior program officer at Results for Development, where she supports the implementation of the Frequent Assessments and Systems Tools for Resilience (FASTR) initiative, a Global Financing Facility effort focused on improving the generation and use of real-time data for decision-making. Her work includes health facility data pipeline development, country analytics, technical facilitation in English and French, and coordination across multisector partners.

She has led or contributed to analytic and policy work on road safety, health system performance and gender equity. She was a key contributor to multi-country publications on future health spending in Latin America and supported the development of technical tools for analyzing DHIS2 and health facility data. Her social network analysis on women in global health has informed leadership development programs around the world.

Before joining R4D, Dr. López Hernández was a consultant at the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility, where she supported analytics development for the FASTR initiative. She previously held consulting roles with the World Bank Haiti team and the Inter-American Development Bank, and led research on road safety governance and coalition building at the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety. She has worked in more than 12 countries, including Guinea, Ghana, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil.

Dr. López Hernández is a Fulbright García-Robles scholar, a member of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health, and part of the Ruth Rice Puffer Fund Scholars Network at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

She holds a doctorate and a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a medical degree from UNAM in Mexico. She also completed a specialization in gender, sexuality and law at CIDE. She speaks Spanish (native), English (full professional) and French (advanced), and is proficient in Stata, R, NVivo and Kumu.

Publications

• The Lancet: Future Health Expenditures in Latin America and the Caribbean (2025) 
• BMJ Open: Digital job-aid evaluation in Burkina Faso
• Annals of Global Health: Women in Global Health Network Study  

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Dr. Bear has contributed to global market shaping and scale-up efforts since the early 2000s, beginning with GAVI’s PneumoADIP and the Hib Initiative, where she co-led the country support mechanism, providing technical assistance to Ministries of Health for vaccine rollout and impact evaluation. At USAID (2009–2015), she led the development of flagship U.S. Government health initiatives — including the Global Health Initiative, Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths Action Plan, and the Global Health Security Agenda. While based in Bangladesh and Mali, she oversaw catalytic investments in cold chain systems, digital health, health workforce, and governance. She collaborated closely with ministries to co-design frameworks for scaling high-impact interventions as part of national health sector strategies.

From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Bear led strategic and evaluative work that shaped major global health investments. She revised USAID’s maternal and child health investment frameworks to align with the SDGs, evaluated its flagship maternal and child health program, and designed a $1B successor strategy. She also led evaluation of the $3.5B Feed the Future nutrition portfolio, providing evidence that informed its Congressional reauthorization. Her advisory work includes digital health evaluations, such as a telecom-based health insurance product in Bangladesh that informed regional scale-up strategies. From 2019 to 2024, she led global portfolios managing integrated development programs across 25–45 countries, overseeing teams of 500–1,650 staff.

Dr. Bear holds degrees in social policy (BS, Northwestern) and public health (MPH, DrPH, Johns Hopkins). She has lived and worked for over a decade in Burkina Faso, Mali, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Palestine. She is fluent in French (professional) and English (native), and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

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