Giving Compass' Take:

• The United Nations Foundation details some lessons from three years of tracking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the need to embed civic participation early and often.

• What can aid and humanitarian organizations learn from these takeaways? One thing is that progress will not always be a straight line, and that true change requires patience.

• Here's how foundations can scale solutions for the SDGs.

Three years into tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a few insights have emerged few from how governments review, report on, and use progress to achieve the SDGs. While there are legitimate questions about how effective voluntary self-reporting on progress can be (a bit like letting your kid write her own report card), the way governments currently review SDGs progress has its advantages.

Global goal setting provides concrete, measurable (where possible), and time-bound objectives to rally around and aim for. When progress lags on a certain goal or target, world leaders can rally political attention, financing, and partnerships to intensify efforts.

To monitor SDGs progress, the UN holds a global review every July, called the High-level Political Forum, where individual countries can volunteer to review their own progress, known as Voluntary National Reviews or VNRs, and present to a global audience; this year’s forum will take place July 9-18.

In recent months, we’ve convened dialogues with VNR countries, civil society, experts and thought leaders to find ways to improve. Here are four early lessons about SDGs review from those conversations:

  1. Emphasize early learning over early accountability.
  2. Embed civil society participation early on.
  3. Create a safe space for countries to talk about challenges and ask for help.
  4. Help countries move from plans to impact.

Read the full article about 4 lessons learned in tracking progress of the SDGs by Minh-Thu Pham at United Nations Foundation.