Innovative, practical MEL support — in a loop
Our Services
Sophoi provides support in a loop — aiming to build capacity at whatever entry point works for you.
Evidence on its own doesn’t tell you what to do. It becomes useful when the people closest to the work set it against their own experience and reach a conclusion they would defend. The most useful thing we do is help you get there. Our monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) support follows the three steps of our ESLA Loops approach — Evidence, Knowledge Gardening and Sense-making — and you can start with whichever fits.
Evidence
Designing and operationalising complexity-informed tools and methods that are practical, robust and participatory.
Indicators, results and impact frameworks, including theory of change. Evaluations and evaluative methods — typically theory-based, mixed-methods and complexity-aware, for initiatives operating in complex, dynamic and often contested contexts.
Conversation-Based Reporting — replacing extractive written reporting with structured conversations that capture the context and nuance forms often erase. Tools are always co-designed with programme teams, partners and grantees, so they own the process and value it long after we have gone. Recent examples include ClientEarth’s Global Theory of Change for 2025–2030, the ‘Areas of Change’ results framework for the Foundation for International Law for the Environment (FILE), and Conversation-Based Reporting across the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group’s portfolio.
Knowledge Gardening
Relational practices for cultivating and using knowledge, with AI as a tool within human-led processes.
AI-enabled synthesis on a specific assignment — synthesising large, messy bodies of qualitative evidence against a clear conceptual frame. For the Clean Air Fund and the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group, we have used tools such as Claude and NotebookLM for secure synthesis of interviews and transcripts, moving stakeholders rapidly from raw data to strategic priorities.
Building and tending a knowledge garden — working with an organisation’s own people to cultivate a living body of knowledge from what it already holds: the proposals, progress reports, evaluations and strategy papers that are expensively produced and rarely revisited.
Sense-making
Facilitating processes for integrating evidence with insight, to support shared learning and practical action.
Sense-making design and facilitation. Adaptive management, strategy and foresight. Building collaborative sense-making organisations — developing the capacity, and the appetite, to keep doing it without us.
ESLA Loops
Evidence Sense-making Learning Action Loops — our approach to using evidence to inform learning and action on complex challenges. Support works as a loop: start at whichever step fits, and build capacity from there.
Evidence
Complexity-informed tools and methods that are practical, robust and participatory.
Knowledge Gardening
Cultivating and using the knowledge you already hold, with AI as a tool within human-led processes.
Sense-making
Integrating evidence with insight, to support shared learning and practical action.
If you lead impact, evaluation or learning and it’s hard to know what to do next, tell us where you’d start: the evidence, the knowledge you already hold, or making sense of it together. Get in touch, or explore the approach at eslaloops.io.