We help create social change that lasts

Our highly regarded consultancy provides acclaimed design and evaluation services to Australian agencies, organisations and international development partners. 

Design

Successful programs start with a good design. We work with you and your partners to create award-winning designs and strategies, built on local ideas and ownership and grounded in best practice.

Monitoring & Evaluation

Our team of world-class specialists design and implement monitoring and evaluation tailored to your needs. Our work is informed by a deep understanding of theory and what works in practice. We build on what is valued locally and work to be genuinely inclusive. We produce timely evidence to support good decisions.

Learning & Development

We work across all levels of an organisation to build the culture and capability to value and use evidence to support good management. We provide direct mentoring and training to staff, helpdesks and clinics for timely support and trusted advisors at the senior leadership level to offer analysis and strategic advice.

Selected Work

DESIGN

We led the design of DFAT’s gender flagship program in Indonesia—MAMPU, an eight-year, $120M program supporting coalitions of women to work politically to achieve change. Within the sector, it’s regarded as one of DFAT’s most successful programs and featured as the best practice example in DFAT’s guidance on advanced localisation.

We led the design of Disaster READY, DFAT’s $50M disaster preparedness program in the Pacific. The design brought together coalitions of NGOs across five countries and won a DFAT award for disability inclusion.

We worked with a wide range of DFAT stakeholders to develop a strategy to integrate climate change considerations across the aid program, following our earlier work on DFAT’s initial climate partnership design for the Pacific. We have been selected for the Design and MEL Panel for DFAT’s Climate Resilient Communities facility. 

MONITORING & EVALUATION

We’re the lead contractor supporting DFAT to strengthen its organisational evaluation capability and practice from 2024–2028. We provide an agency-wide evaluation helpdesk and in-depth MEL support to Posts in Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Vietnam. With DFAT we developed an organisational evaluation capability building model which has been recognised by the Australian Centre for Evaluation.

Since 2019, we have analysed DFAT’s performance and quality system by validating the final reports for all aid investments over $3M. Our independent validation is used in DFAT’s accountability reporting to the Australian Senate.

After developing technical guidance papers for DFAT on Impact, Thematic and Real-time evaluations, we delivered a flagship impact evaluation assessing the Market Systems Development program in Timor-Leste in 2024 and are now leading a thematic evaluation on intersectionality in 2025 for DFAT’s Gender Branch.

We’ve provided MEL technical services to DFAT’s Humanitarian Branch since 2021. For example, we have led a series of Rapid Reviews for DFAT’s Humanitarian Branch reviewing joint departmental responses to disasters and assessing what worked and what could be further improved.

We provide M&E technical services to DFAT’s Office of the Pacific through the Pacific Recovery Economic Support Program (PRES). For example, we support DFAT to monitor and evaluate its $683m Pacific Direct Financing Fund, supported the MEL for the Aviation program, and established a practical Value for Money Framework for PRES.

We have worked closely with Australian NGOs and their international partners. For example, we designed the award-winning MEL system for the five-year Australia Africa Community Engagement Scheme in 2016. From 2017-2021 we designed and led the MEL for the Australian Humanitarian Partnership (AHP) and established the practice for joint impact evaluations of their AHP humanitarian responses.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

We’ve built a Senior Leadership Dashboard as an overview of DFAT’s humanitarian investment performance each year since 2023.

We produce annual themed learning papers for DFAT based on our extensive review of documentation while validating DFAT’s final investment monitoring reports. Our papers respond to current needs in the department, producing evidence informed recommendations. Our presentation of findings through workshops and brownbag sessions are highly valued within DFAT, often informing subsequent policy and programming.

With DFAT, we run monthly Performance and Quality sessions for up to 130 staff. We delivered investment design and performance management training to over 300 Australian and International DFAT staff in 2023–24.

About Bluebird

Bluebird was founded in 2007 by Jess Kenway, a multi award-winning M&E specialist with over 20 years’ experience across Australia, Oceania, South-East Asia, and Africa.

She has twice won the Australasian Evaluation Society's Award for Excellence in Evaluation. Two of her program designs include DFAT’s highly regarded flagship Indonesian gender equality program MAMPU and award-winning Disaster READY disaster preparedness program in the Pacific. She was asked to contribute to a Development Intelligence Lab series on how to strengthen evaluation practices within DFAT as interest and demand for evaluation increases.

Her team of world-class consultants hail from Australia and abroad. They have worked in virtually every development sector and context.

Bluebird’s approach is to take on a select number of consultancies each year and to deliver these to an exceptionally high standard. We ensure all of our products and processes are highly engaging, and meticulously produced.

We value opportunities to work with organisations and teams over the longer term to support the use of evidence and learning throughout the management cycle.

While our current work  focuses on the Australian aid sector, we have a long track record of providing program design and MEL services to state and federal Australian agencies and NGOs. 

Since 2012, Bluebird has held a Standing Offer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for Design, Research and Monitoring and Evaluation. Bluebird is also an approved consultancy on the Management Advisory Services Panel with the Australian Government.

  • South Asia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Samoa, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, South Africa, Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Australia.

  • Climate change, disaster preparedness and humanitarian response, women's leadership and economic empowerment, economic development and trade, community development, education, vocational education and training, health, governance, democratic governance, rural development, natural resource management, law and justice reform, and financial literacy.

  • UNDP, DFID, EU, Oxfam, Red Cross, Plan, International Organisation for Cooperation in Evaluation, URS Sustainable Development, Adam Smith International, Coffey International, Global Trade Professionals Alliance, Alinea International.

  • DFAT, Federal Department of the Environment, Australian Sports Commission, Victorian and Queensland Departments of Primary Industries, Goulburn, Broken and Queensland Murray Darling Catchment Authorities, South West Queensland Legal Access Centre, Australian Wool Innovation, Australian Landscape Trust, Environment Victoria, AngliCORD, Homebase Youth Service, Financial Literacy Australia, Women’s Health in the North, Small Business Mentoring Service, Anglicare.