There are many different methods and processes that can be used in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). The Rainbow Framework organises these methods and processes in terms of the tasks that are often undertaken in M&E. The range of tasks are organised into seven colour-coded clusters that aim to make it easy for you to find what you need: Manage, Define, Frame, Describe, Understand Causes, Synthesise, and Report & Support Use.

The Rainbow Framework can help you plan an M&E activity by prompting you to think about each of these tasks in turn, and select a combination of methods and processes that cover all tasks involved. You might also choose an approach, which is a pre-packaged combination of methods.

Explore the Rainbow Framework

The Rainbow Framework shows the different methods or processes that can be used for each task in an evaluation. Most of these tasks are needed in any M&E activity, but some (marked with an asterisk) might not be needed, depending on the purpose of the M&E activity or the specific type of evaluation you aim to conduct.

Task clusters

There are seven key clusters of tasks in the Rainbow framework

In this section

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