A/HRC/40/78 57. The Board can certainly state that OHCHR with its expertise and experience is the strongest possible reference organization to continue supporting the United Nations system on the ground, asserting the key normative role of the Organization and enhancing ways and means of more explicitly integrating human rights into programming and strategies. B. Measuring the results of technical cooperation and the response of the Office of the High Commissioner 58. The Board continues to benefit from the reports and information provided and facilitated through the OHCHR performance monitoring system. The information being provided by the Secretariat is substantially improving the basis for providing advice and assessing the relevance of programmes. The Board would therefore like to encourage OHCHR to continue investing in the maintenance and expansion of the system. 59. The Board learned that OHCHR plans to continue investing in transforming and enhancing the way in which it operates, in line with its trajectory as a fully results-based organization. 60. The Board notes with appreciation how OHCHR has been able to strengthen its evaluation capacity substantially, ensuring that evaluation increasingly forms part of the results-based management cycle. The Board has observed the considerable achievements in terms of the perceptions and institutionalization of an evaluation function and culture within OHCHR to fully enhance its capacities to improve the quality of support on the ground. IV. Status of funding and donors 61. The Board was updated on the overall financial status of the Voluntary Fund, discussed and analysed the status of implementation of the workplans for 2018 and 2019, and endorsed them. An analysis of funding trends between 2008 and 2018 (see annex I) shows a slight increase in 2018 against a background of a steadily decreasing tendency in voluntary contributions to the Fund over the last six years. The Board is very pleased with the increase in voluntary contributions in 2018. It is a good reflection of the strategic vision and enhanced capacity to communicate, as well as the crucial results achieved in supporting States in the effective promotion and protection of human rights. The Board has been able to corroborate those efforts in situ and would like to congratulate OHCHR and the Member States concerned. All the partners with whom the Board met confirmed the need for increased financial resources to expand human rights presences and programmes on the ground. 62. The total expenditure of the Fund at 31 December 2018 was $13,301,063. The cost plan increase in 2018, as well as the slightly increased contributions, is due to the increase in voluntary contributions received by OHCHR in 2018. Last year saw expansion in the coverage of the human rights advisers deployed, for consistency purposes, through the Voluntary Fund, as well as the newly established country presences also covered under the Fund. That change means that the financial contributions from the various financial instruments (for example, the United Nations Development Group 2012 Strategy for the deployment of human rights advisers) are also being channelled by OHCHR through the Fund. As at 31 December 2018, the Fund had received a total of $17,893,744 in pledges and contributions. That meant that for the first time the Fund made good the deficit that needed previously to be covered by its reserves (according to the Financial Regulations and Rules of the United Nations, trust funds must ensure they carry a reserve of 15 per cent of projected expenditure). Some of the increase in funds arrived late in the year and will be carried over to 2019. 63. The Fund provided resources for technical cooperation programmes designed to build strong human rights frameworks at the national level in 40 regions, countries and territories through 28 human rights advisers/human rights mainstreaming projects (in Argentina, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, the Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, 12