Defining and measuring beneficiary engagement

The concept of beneficiary engagement includes the notions of “participation”, communication “in both directions”, and accountability, as well as new ways of establishing dialogue, notably via social networks. Beneficiary engagement helps to promote proximity, acceptance, and aid quality and to gain access to remote and dangerous regions.

The ICRC places populations at the centre of its operational strategy. With the aim of continually improving its effectiveness in a context of growing humanitarian needs, it is seeking to engage with beneficiaries in an even more structured and systematic way in order to involve them more in the evaluation of their needs, and decisions about how these can be met most appropriately.
The ICRC has therefore asked Groupe URD to help develop a structured method for measuring and monitoring beneficiary engagement.

This project has two objectives:

• establishing a common definition of the concept of beneficiary engagement, what this means in operational terms and the limits of this concept;
• establishing indicators and ways of measuring beneficiary engagement at different levels of the organization, in the field and at headquarters, including at the global level, in order to monitor the implementation of the organisation’s strategy for 2015-2018.