Self-serve MEL tools for animal advocacy
Koushik Labs builds self-serve MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning) tools for animal advocacy organisations, with AI doing most of the heavy lifting. The idea is that a team can make sense of what is changing around its work, and what its own data is showing, without hiring a data team or bringing in a consultant.
Why this exists
Animal advocacy organisations collect far more than they have time to use. Survey exports and campaign trackers pile up next to funder reports, and the learnings that should shape next year's plans often stay buried in them. Most groups cannot hire a data team.
Hence, I think a lot of that gap can be closed with well-designed tools that teams run themselves. The tools take on the repetitive work, so programme staff get to spend their time on the judgement calls (and far less of it copying and pasting).
How I work
The habits that make an evaluation trustworthy are the same ones that make an AI tool trustworthy, so I apply them to both.
Before measuring or building anything, I write down what a useful result would look like and how I would check it. Vague instructions produce vague results, from people and from AI alike, so most of the effort goes into deciding what I actually want.
A figure that comes out of a model is marked as one (with a ~ or a range). An estimate is never called proven.
I check my own work against its sources before anyone else has to. When something turns out wrong, I say so and fix it in the open.
The people using these tools run campaigns and programmes. They should not need a technical background to get value out of them, just as I did not need one to build them.
Overall view:
Rigour comes from the process. A computer science degree is optional.
Work
Context monitoring for animal advocacy organisations. Bellwether is an AI-assisted way for advocacy teams to keep track of what is changing around their work, without having to read everything themselves.
If your team spends hours every week following policy and corporate news (and the media coverage around it), I would love to hear how you do it today.
Tell me how you track itKoushik Labs offers
Koushik Labs does not offer
MEL consulting, whether that is Theory of Change work or designing indicators and evaluations. For that, please reach out to The Mission Motor, where I work as an MEL Advisor.
A self-serve tool is a starting point
These tools do not replace one-to-one MEL support. They are built to take an organisation from 0 to 0.5, meaning a first handle on what to track and what its data is showing. Getting from 0.5 to 1 is a different job: building an MEL system that fits the organisation's own strategy and context. That takes tailored support, and it is what The Mission Motor does.
About
I am an MEL Advisor at The Mission Motor, where I help animal advocacy organisations with Theories of Change, indicators, evaluation frameworks and the learning systems around them. Measurement in this movement is hard, hence I find the work worth doing well.
I also build things with AI, and I cannot code. What I bring is the same thing I bring to evaluation: thinking the problem through, writing down what "done" looks like before starting, checking the result properly and redirecting when things drift. It turns out that is most of what building with AI actually requires.
Get in touch
If you are an evaluator, I would value your critique of my measurement thinking. And if you work in the movement and have been curious about AI but assumed it was not for you, that is exactly the conversation I want to have!
Or find me on LinkedIn, where I write about building with AI as someone who cannot code.