Partner with us
Work
with us
Torchbearer is commissioned to design, deliver, measure and verify social and environmental programmes. Below is who we work with, how an engagement runs, and what we will need from you.
Start here
Tell us what you
are trying to change
Where, for whom, and what you have to report. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.
Who we
work with
Four kinds of partner, with four different problems. The capability is the same; the reporting format is not.
Institutions with a social or environmental mandate
Organisations holding a defined commitment and needing programmes designed and delivered against it — with evidence that satisfies whoever set the mandate in the first place.
Corporates with disclosure obligations
Companies whose sustainability and social spending now has to be evidenced to a standard that activity reporting does not meet. We build the programme and the evidence trail together, in the reporting format the obligation actually requires.
Funds and development finance institutions
Where an implementing partner is needed in a hard delivery geography, and results have to arrive in a defined results framework rather than a narrative report.
Government and public-sector entities
Programme design, delivery capability and measurement architecture, built to transfer in-house rather than to create a permanent dependency on an external party.
How an
engagement runs
Deliberately front-loaded. The expensive mistakes in this work are all made in the first three weeks.
Scoping conversation
What the mandate is, what has already been tried, what you have to report and to whom. No cost, and it frequently concludes that you do not need us.
Design engagement
A fixed-scope piece of work producing the programme design, measurement plan, indicator mapping and cost per outcome. It stands on its own — you are free to deliver it with anyone.
Delivery
Execution through local partners against the agreed design, with operational reporting throughout and variance flagged as it happens rather than at close.
Measurement and verification
Baseline, endline, verification pack, and a published programme review including what underperformed.
Transfer
Where the engagement includes capability building, the measurement architecture and the trained team stay with you.
What we ask for
Three things,
up front
A stated objective, not a budget line
We need to know what change you are trying to produce. If the requirement is a number for a report, we are the wrong partner and will say so early.
Freedom to publish the method
Commercial and participant confidentiality are absolute. Methodological transparency is not negotiable — if we cannot publish how a result was produced, the result is not worth much to either of us.
Enough runway to establish a baseline
Measurement designed after delivery has begun cannot be repaired later. Where a timeline does not allow a baseline, we will deliver the programme and report it honestly as unmeasured rather than reconstruct one.