The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds projects in countries with a high burden of maternal and neonatal deaths. The projects implement innovative approaches to enhancing survival of mothers and newborns, largely through community-based innovations. To complement this investment, the foundation funds IDEAS at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; a six-year measurement, learning and evaluation grant which assesses its maternal and neonatal health strategy in Ethiopia, North-East Nigeria and Uttar Pradesh in India. The implementation projects are tasked to produce evidence of the effectiveness of their innovations. To support them, IDEAS runs a Technical Resource Centre (TRC) to collaborate with grantees and enhance their capacity for measurement, learning and evaluation. This poster gives some lessons learned from running the TRC.