The ambition

The Robert Bosch Stiftung is one of the leading non-partisan grant-making foundations in Europe. The foundation was established in 1964 and dedicates its resources to addressing social and societal challenges in Germany and beyond.

From 2017 to 2021, it completed a comprehensive strategy review. As a result, the foundation streamlined existing portfolios and reallocated resources to new themes.

One of the new themes was climate change, where the Robert Bosch Stiftung decided to focus its support on the issue of land use.

Land use is central to the challenge of climate change. The foundation advocates for a paradigm shift in agriculture, forestry, and the food system, based on a regenerative and socially-just approach. Geographically, its land use work focuses on Europe and regions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

After a first phase of planning, scoping and trialling its land use strategy, the Robert Bosch Stiftung commissioned Firetail to help refine its Theory of Change (ToC), and co-develop a robust Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) framework.

Our approach

Firetail supported the Robert Bosch Stiftung for a period of nine months. We worked in close collaboration with the climate change team and held regular update sessions with selected staff members of the core MEAL team. These sessions served as immediate feedback loops and helped us tailor the frameworks to each team’s needs.

Together, we generated a common understanding of the status quo and discussed potential barriers and limitations to success. We started by familiarising ourselves with foundation-wide and team-specific strategic approaches, methods and values that were to be reflected in the ToC and MEAL frameworks.

A series of regional workshops elaborated on the rationale of each element of the ToC. Guided discussions and interactive methods helped us to develop ideas about potential pathways to change. We then took selected ideas forward, clustered and revised them.

It was important for the climate change team that there was a participatory approach that included the wider community. This led to outputs that were aligned to the foundation’s principles, and also the needs and demands of partners and the wider stakeholder community.

A Theory of Change was delivered that reflected the distinct context and approaches of each region, and can serve as a foundation for future decision-making.

The second phase was to develop a MEAL framework to allow the climate change team to reflect on and learn about the impact of its land use portfolio against this Theory of Change.

Again, an iterative and participatory approach included internal and external stakeholders in a series of workshops. Based on this we produced a final framework, along with underlying indicators and processes. We then worked to establish ownership of the framework within the team.

The impact

The Robert Bosch Stiftung now has a solution for its land use work that incorporates the local context of each geographic area.

It brings focus to each team’s activities, strategic objectives and priorities, which is helping them have more meaningful and directed discussions with partners and stakeholders.

The guided discussions on MEAL allowed the team to clearly define their approach to MEAL and their values around joint-learning with partners.

By developing a MEAL framework that is practicable and can be adapted in line with the team’s and partners’ needs, the climate change team is well-equipped to strengthen its learning approach, and improve the assessment and adaptation of its current and future activities in their land use work.