As in any change or development effort, it is vital to assess progress against your stated objectives. This will help the partners revise their plans, activities, and partnering agreement to ensure continuous improvement and to address possible unintended negative impacts. It is also necessary to transparently report to other stakeholders about the initiative. Local communities need to be both participants and audience in such monitoring efforts.

Monitoring progress is assisted by developing a logic framework that summarises how the partners' inputs or resources and the partnership activities are expected to lead to particular outputs, outcomes, and impacts, each of which can be matched with specific indicators that need to be measured.

Outputs are the tangible, immediate results of project activities. Using the Santam example for illustration, a measurable output might be the number of training workshops for firefighters. The resulting outcome is the enhanced capacity of the local government's Disaster Risk Management agency, which may be measured, for instance, in terms of improvements in firefighters' response times. Finally, the resulting, intended impacts are reduced loss of life or assets due to fires and other disasters.

The following figure provides a generic description of the elements of a logic framework, as well as illustrative examples from Santam's partnership with the Eden District Municipality, including possible measurement indicators.

Mapping and measuring these different layers helps assess both the tangible, direct consequences of partnership activities and the more indirect, ultimate impacts. It also helps elaborate and continuously test the assumptions that link the partnership's activities to its intended impacts.

Monitoring progress is by definition a comparison across time. To enable this, it is helpful to develop a baseline at or near the commencement of the resilience building effort. Measuring and reporting on progress in subsequent years can then compare changes against this baseline.

While such progress reviews should focus on explicit objectives of the partnership, they should also give attention to unintended positive or negative effects. As outlined above, one such possible unintended consequence might be that the company contribution might replace or pre-empt the government fulfilling its statutory responsibilities, so this risk will need to be borne in mind in ongoing monitoring efforts.

A second risk is that the partnership efforts have unequal benefits for different groups, so the monitoring process should pay particular attention to partnership outcomes and impacts for vulnerable communities.