Adopting Value for Investment at scale: what we’ve learned
Over the last few years, I’ve helped government agencies, NGOs, and consulting firms adopt Value for Investment (VfI) frameworks at whole-organisation scale. This post offers some reflections for those who may be interested in developing organisation-wide systems, skill sets and mindsets through scaling VfI.
Oxford Policy Management was an early adopter. Together, we’ve collaborated on dozens of VfI evaluations commissioned for external accountability and learning, and published our guide to assessing value for money (VfM) in development programmes, now in its second edition. Its influence now extends to whole-of-government initiatives, such as its inclusion in the UK Evaluation Task Force’s Evaluation Academy.
Other examples further illustrate VfI’s momentum, with adoption at scale across diverse contexts - research and development (R&D), financial sector development, international collaborations, sport & recreation, indigenous development, consulting firms, and more.
The approach is gaining ground as a credible organising framework for participatory evaluation, interpreting evidence, assessing VfM, and informing strategic decision-making. No longer just a niche for evaluators, VfI is a practical tool for governments, stakeholders, boards, executives, and whole organisations embedding the approach into their internal evaluation and performance systems, and using it to commission external assessments.
Why scale VfI?
Organisation-wide adoption of VfI means embedding its principles across strategic planning, evaluation, monitoring, and reporting functions - not just applying them to individual projects. VfI scales coherently across projects, portfolios, and whole organisations, with guiding principles remaining consistent while contextual particulars vary.
When adopted at scale, VfI can transform how evaluations are conceived, conducted, and used. The approach promotes evaluation practices that strengthen learning across teams, help organisations to understand and articulate the value they create, and improve the quality, value, and credibility of investment and performance decisions.
These shifts become visible in core organisational practices. For example, one government agency shifted from annual reporting based on key performance indicators (KPIs) to more reflective and evaluative assessments, drawing on rubrics, mixed methods, and stakeholder voices. In another case, VfI has helped a ministry to commission evaluation reports that “get off the fence” and provide clear, decisive answers to VfM questions, moving beyond descriptive analysis to well-reasoned, actionable judgements.
Adopting VfI is as much a cultural shift as a technical one. Sustained culture change isn’t achieved through mandates; people have to see for themselves how the approach delivers clarity, transparency, and practical decision support. In one organisation, initial scepticism turned to active support once the first VfI-informed report delivered insights on stakeholder value that hadn’t been visible before. Over time, VfI reports sell themselves through their own quality and value, motivating ongoing investment in evaluation and capability development.
Learning how to scale the approach
Different organisations take different paths. There’s no single blueprint - the right starting point depends on the organisation’s evaluation maturity, leadership appetite, and available evidence.
VfI adoption works best when built around its eight-step approach. The structure is intuitive enough to scale across an organisation, supporting consistent application while allowing contextual flexibility. The stepped process provides a foundation designed to scale from project-level pilots all the way up to organisation-wide systems.
Often, organisational adoption of VfI begins with a small, cross-functional team co-creating a VfI framework, involving stakeholders in workshops to articulate a value proposition and rubrics. Over time, internal working groups can become hubs to build understanding and use of the approach across the organisation. For example, in one agency, a working group met regularly for several months, iteratively developing an organisation-wide framework while engaging with internal and external stakeholders at key touchpoints. This investment is paying back through deepening buy-in and credibility across the organisation.
The VfI approach hinges on articulating a clear value proposition, criteria and standards, providing an agreed framework to underpin evaluative judgements. It’s crucial that key stakeholders see their values and language in the framework. The framework design process requires direct engagement with key stakeholders, clear communication with wider groups, and willingness to adapt language to fit the organisational context.
Involving senior leadership and Boards early on - e.g., through workshops and regular updates - helps to anchor the framework in organisational values and priorities as well as fostering buy-in. Interim check-ins and feedback opportunities demonstrate progress, maintain engagement, and facilitate relevance. You’ll know the change is taking hold when leaders reference rubric criteria in discussion, or when the Board starts asking for mixed-methods evidence.
Some organisations pilot a single evaluation project before scaling up; others start with a whole-organisation framework before adapting it to individual programs.
Typically, full adoption progresses over 1-2 years or more, gradually embedding evaluative reasoning into planning, reporting, and decision cycles, and building the evidence base to support ongoing assessments. During this journey, there are quicker deliverables and wins that help to keep up momentum and buy-in.
VfI integrates with organisation-wide monitoring and reporting frameworks, providing a bridge between performance metrics and evaluative reasoning. Early assessments may reveal gaps in data and evidence, which in turn help inform plans for improving future data collection.
Driving these sorts of organisational shifts involves investments of energy, attention, and time. Critical supports for adopting VfI at scale need to go beyond initial capability building and should be woven into the organisation’s ongoing practices. This means investing in formal supports such as mentoring and regular peer review, while also creating integrated monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and decision processes that embed evaluative thinking as business-as-usual.
Communities of practice - where staff share experience, test ideas, and maintain a sense of collective ownership of the framework - can help to sustain momentum, support knowledge sharing, surface and address challenges collaboratively, and monitor fidelity to VfI principles as the organisation evolves.1 The ongoing, informal connections developed through communities of practice complement formal systems, enabling continuous learning and helping to embed change long after the initial roll-out.
More than a framework
The most powerful change is often in the way people think - valuing mixed methods evidence, participatory inquiry, and explicit evaluative reasoning as everyday practice. Evaluative conversations start popping up in places they weren’t before: management meetings, team catch-ups, strategy sessions. Questions shift from “what are the numbers?” to “what does this evidence really mean for the people we serve?” Mixed methods, participatory processes, and evaluative reasoning start weaving their way into broader monitoring, evaluation, and decision-making.
Rubric development can seem technocratic at first, but it often becomes one of the most transformative parts of the process. Something interesting happens when teams get in a room to wrestle with the messy business of defining quality and value: they start to develop a shared language for sense-making, learning, and accountability. The conversations get richer. Teams become more confident in making evaluative judgements and articulating their value.
You may notice a culture shift in the way people grapple with complexity and uncertainty, in the way judgements become collective, and how ‘value’ conversations find their way into reports and everyday dialogue. When that happens, you know it’s more than a framework - it’s a way of working and thinking.
Unlike many other frameworks that force organizations to conform to a more rigid structure, the VfI approach aligns naturally with our context. Rather than feeling like a square peg in a round hole, it integrates seamlessly, enabling practical application without compromising organizational uniqueness.
- feedback from a client (used with permission).
It’s worth noting, too, that these shifts aren’t unique to VfI. Many evaluators have long promoted similar ways of working. What VfI offers is a vehicle for introducing and extending these practices. Initially developed to provide better answers to VfM questions, it is turning out to have wider spin-offs for organisations’ evaluative cultures, sparking new conversations about impact and value.
Balancing benefits and challenges
Most of the challenges that arise mirror the benefits. It takes time to build capability, buy-in, and close evidence gaps. It can surface tensions between existing performance systems and new ways of working. But as those challenges are negotiated, the organisation grows stronger in its clarity, coherence, and ability to learn. For example, in more than one consulting firm, I’ve witnessed an initially hesitant Director become a vocal supporter after experiencing the approach in action. Adoption is a collaborative process - building shared understanding about value and impact through transparent, participatory practice.
Though there is little official government guidance on the approach at this stage, written resources, training, and mentoring support are available (see below) to help practitioners and organisations embed it effectively. Further official guidance may emerge in the future.
Sustained training, mentoring, and quality assurance processes are helpful to ensure fidelity to VfI principles and maintain evaluation quality over time.
Internal and external stakeholders may have questions. Here are some FAQs to help you respond.
FAQs
These questions have recurred as we have implemented VfI at scale in different contexts. If you encounter additional questions, let me know.
How is VfI different from existing evaluation or economic methods? VfI isn’t another method - we already have the methods and tools we need. VfI is a system to help define what value means in context, select the right mix of methods, synthesise and interpret evidence, and make transparent, defensible judgements. It provides a process for aligning evaluative and economic reasoning, stakeholder values, and diverse evidence sources, supporting organisational accountability and learning.
Does VfI mean we have to buy new software or tools? No new proprietary tools or systems are required. VfI is a flexible evaluation system designed to use data organisations already have, together with mixed methods and participatory processes. The emphasis is on developing shared criteria and standards.
What support is available? Free written guidance documents are available, including practical handbooks and case examples. Training and additional supports can be purchased to assist in building capacity and tailoring frameworks to our context.
Will VfI evaluations be credible to funders and external reviewers? Yes, the VfI approach is used internationally and recognised by major funders, government bodies, and evaluation societies for its transparent, interdisciplinary, and participatory approach to evaluating resource use and value creation. Explicit evaluative reasoning, with transparent and clear reporting support traceable, credible conclusions.
Isn’t it all just subjective? No - explicit evaluative reasoning guards against individual, idiosyncratic, arbitrary, and opaque judgements. It provides a negotiated, agreed, transparent pathway from evidence to judgements, supporting inter-rater reliability, validity, and credibility.
Is VfI suitable only for large programs, or can we use it for small projects as well? VfI is scalable and adaptable. Its core principles (interdisciplinary, mixed methods, evaluative reasoning, participatory) apply to investments of any size. The scope and level of effort are matched to the stakes and complexity, making the evaluation effort proportionate to each situation.
Does VfI conflict with existing performance management or reporting systems? VfI is designed to complement and integrate with existing systems. It clarifies value and performance, helps to identify and address evidence gaps, and enhances reporting by integrating evaluative reasoning and mixed methods evidence.
What will VfI demand of me? Stakeholder involvement is essential, but participation is always designed to be proportionate and respectful of your time and capacity. You’ll get plenty of advance notice if input or data is needed, and most requests will align with your existing responsibilities. We will make best use of what is already available, and additional effort would only requested when clearly justified by the value of learning or decision at hand, so demands will remain manageable and meaningful - not excessive or disruptive.
Looking ahead
VfI brings evaluative and economic thinking together with strategic decision-making in a single, coherent framework that can start small and reach wide - even across whole government systems. Organisation-wide adoption means integrating VfI with monitoring, reporting, and performance frameworks. The result is a consolidated evidence and decision architecture. In my experience, scaling VfI is as much about cultivating shared purpose as building systems - each reinforces the other. If adoption is on your agenda, treat it as a learning journey: invest in engagement, allow time, and foster the culture as much as the approach.
My colleagues and I continue to build VfI capability across organisations through training, mentoring, and applied evaluation partnerships. We can join forces with you to tackle a VfI evaluation together, develop your team’s capabilities, or engage with senior leaders and Board to facilitate building organisation-wide systems and mindsets. Contact me to discuss your needs.
Take-homes
Organisation-wide VfI builds learning, accountability, evaluation culture, and good resource use.
VfI scales flexibly across sectors, supporting unique organisational needs and enabling both project-level pilots and whole-organisation rollouts.
Evaluation systems built on VfI uncover and articulate real value, not just metrics.
Successful adoption starts with cross-functional teams and stakeholder co-creation.
Developing shared rubrics anchors frameworks in contextually relevant values and creates a common language.
Iterative piloting with feedback, peer learning, formal supports such as training and mentoring, and quality assurance help sustain momentum and context-fit scaling.
Adoption works best as a continuous, collaborative learning process, with leadership modelling transparency, supportive practice, and a learning mindset that drives ongoing adaptation.
Culture changes when evaluative reasoning and mixed methods become business-as-usual and when people experience new insights for themselves; patient and persistent engagement pays off.
VfI complements existing evaluation methods, tools, and data systems; integration is possible.
Expect initial implementation to reveal evidence gaps - these are opportunities to guide future improvements in data systems and evaluation capacity.
Guidance documents
The following free guides can be downloaded here.
Thanks to Patrick Ward for thoughtful peer review. All opinions, errors, and omissions herein remain my responsibility.
Fidelity to VfI principles means adhering to key practices, including collaborative engagement, mixed methods, explicit evaluative reasoning, and integrating insights from evaluation and economics, to ensure quality and credibility in VfI assessments. For a more comprehensive discussion of VfI principles, including the importance of contextual sensitivity, stakeholder involvement, and ethical practice, see: What’s the Value Proposition of the Value for Investment Approach?
Spot on. Love that VfI is 'no longer just a niche for evaluators.' Finaly, good ideas escape their silos!