Stage 3: Plan
Achieving sustainable benefits (outcomes) for the poor lies at the centre of M4P programming. This means focussing on the long-term capacity of market systems and players to function effectively, rather than short-term impact gains. It requires the M4P programme to carefully define how the ‘system’ should function, before targeting interventions aimed to deliver that vision. The sustainability principle of M4P necessarily means acting incisively through discrete actions from which there is a clear exit strategy.
Having identified how a market system could work better, a M4P programme must describe how it plans to support the changes needed. In building this strategy for intervention, the programme also details how changes will be sustained, and how and when the programme itself can withdraw. M4P programmes must take a pragmatic approach to targeting interventions that not only result in lasting change, but which are also within the capacity of the programme to deliver.
Moving from diagnosis to the formulation of solutions, a M4P programme must describe a coherent vision of the systemic change it seeks to engender and which represents both a feasible and sustainable future market system. For it to contribute to the formation of this sustainable market system, the M4P programme must understand the current and future roles expected of players, rules and supporting functions, and elaborate a strategy of targeted intervention to facilitate this market system change. The design of interventions builds on four primary steps:
Step 1: Defining a vision of a more sustainable market system
Building on understanding of how the market system(s) currently work, a M4P programme develops a vision of how they might work more effectively in the future. This requires the programme to analyse and elaborate potential solutions to the causes of systemic constraint. A M4P programme considers only those solutions that demonstrate potential, feasibility and (critically) sustainability.
Step 2: Analysing the role of players, rules and supporting functions in the market system
Verifying the feasibility and sustainability of potential solutions requires in-depth understanding of precisely ‘who’ is performing ‘what’ functions (including who ‘does’ and who ‘pays’ for those functions) in the market system. Importantly, understanding the market system often involves examining ‘interconnected’ market systems that may play a supporting function role in the ‘core’ market.
Step 3: Accounting for other factors
In order to realise the vision of the future market system, the M4P programme must take account of other prevailing factors that may influence that vision. These may include factors associated with the context or history of the market system, or factors that may influence the capacities and incentives of market system players to undertake their envisaged functions.
Step 4: Defining a logic for programme intervention
The design process must deliver a clear programme for intervention. A M4P programme develops and elaborates a well-defined intervention plan that explains the interventions proposed and describes in detail the impact ‘logic’ that links these interventions to the sustainable outcomes and future vision envisaged for the market system(s).
A more detailed guide to designing M4P interventions can be found in section 3C (pp.31-40) of The Operational Guide for the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) Approach.