ABSTRACT
Out of US$104 million, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) was generating more than 50 percent of its income internally, which gave it a lot of power in society. BRAC had a relationship in which the government felt it needed the nongovernmental to cover the poor people. Having all stakeholders involved in an evaluation creates a balance of power so that the dominant institution cannot steer the evaluation in a particular way. A member of the evaluation staff at Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said she had just realized that BRAC employed about 50 times as many people as her ministry. Commenting on the remark that BRAC was a learning institution, she said that her ministry worked hard to learn from evaluations, which turned out to be extremely difficult. Looking at both the economic and the social sustainability of programs was the point of development, and BRAC had taken this as a serious business, not just for poverty alleviation.
