Helping grantees focus on impact

North East Funders Forum Sept 2011

Tris Lumley

7 September 2011

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Social impact—what does it mean to trusts and foundations?

• Your impact• Against your mission/vision

• Against your specific objectives

• Aggregating impact from grant-making

• Your grantees’ impact• Against their mission/vision/objectives

• Against their reporting requirements to you

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Funders are part of a cycle (& system)

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What I’ll cover today

• What approaches might help to increase your grantees’ (& your own) impact focus?• Providing support to grantees (Funder Plus)

• Developing your own impact focus/capacity

• Supporting the field- Shared impact measurement- Harmonising reporting frameworks

NPC believes impact measurement has to be centred on and driven by the charity if it is to really add value

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A Funder Plus impact approach

• Almost all funders ask grantees for results information: two-thirds always do.

• Funders do not think that charities’ monitoring and evaluation work matches their requests for results information.

NPC, National Performance Programme 2010-11

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A framework for thinking about support

1. What are your aims for providing support?

2. What are the principles of your approach?

3. What barriers will you encounter?

4. How will you measure what your support achieves?

5. What’s the right support package for you?

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What are the principles behind your approach?

• Do you want to make the support mandatory?

• How flexible do you want the support to be?

• How involved do you want to get?

Answers to these questions will be determined partly by the resources you want to devote to the support and the needs of your

grantees.

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What are the barriers to helping grantees through support?

• Resistance to evaluation

• Challenges of measurement

• Embedding monitoring and evaluation into practice

• Multiple reporting (and support) regimes

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How can charities overcome barriers to impact measurement?

We don’t… Solution

… have the money or timeDo evaluation internally at low cost

Show evaluation saves staff time

… have internal pressure to measure

Chief executive and trustees become measurement champions

… have staff who believe in measurement

Link measurement to the charity’s values, link back to helping beneficiaries

… have staff who think we can measure our impact

Convince staff of the need to measure

… have the right measurement expertise

Get external evaluators to deliver evaluation

Train staff in measurement

Hire staff with measurement skills

… know what to measure

Be clear about aims and objectives of intervention

Research indicators of success

Get advice from external experts

We don’t… Solution

… know how to measure

Use proven measurement tools

Start with data that is simple and quick to collect

… have the right data

Tailor data collected to your needs

Make data collection part of the service process

… know how to analyse the data

Use experts to analyse and interpret data

Review literature on ‘what works’ to identify ways to improve the service

… know how to communicate findings

Focus on analysis relevant to audience

Avoid technical language

… have funders interested in impact

Find funders who support grantees to evaluate and respond to charities’ needs

Convince funders to pay for complex evaluations

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We found there are common steps towards a strong impact approach

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A Funder Plus approach to impact might look like this…

What are your aims in

providing support?

• Measure your impact• Improve reporting• Understand success• Build grantees’ skills

Diagnosis of grantee needs/capacity

What are the principles

behind your approach?

• Mandatory or optional?• Flexible or standardised?• Get involved or stay hands off?

Consider barriers and set expectations

What does your support

package look like?

For example:• Training• Internal or external evaluation

Provide support

Measure impact of support

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Developing your own approach

• An impact approach isn’t just about measurement• Planning—strategy, programme design

• Operations—applications, selection, grant-making

• Monitoring & evaluation—reporting, grantee support on impact measurement

• Review—analysis, learning, knowledge sharing

How much resource do you want to put into developing your own impact capacity and expertise?

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What does effectiveness mean for foundations?

1. What’s the problem you’re trying to address?

2. What do you do to address it?

3. What are you achieving?

4. How do you know?

5. How are you learning and improving?

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What does effectiveness mean for foundations?

• To answer the questions you’ll need

1. Clear objectives

2. Defined strategy to achieve them

3. Track progress towards them

4. Gather evidence of progress/impact

5. Review, learn, improve and communicate

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What is an effective foundation?

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A family foundation began its journey by experimenting with what worked

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A venture philanthropy foundation strengthens effective charities

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Effectiveness means…

• Clear objectives• Foundation’s vision & mission

• Defined programme areas

• Defined strategy to achieve them• Grants?

• Playing active, public role as foundation?

• Strengthening charities & sector?

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Effectiveness means…

• Operating principles focused on impact• Identify effective charities aligned with objectives

• Appropriate type of funding

• Smart processes

• Support to improve grantees?

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Effectiveness means…

• Track progress• Reporting framework designed to help charities

capture what they need on impact

• Gather evidence of progress/impact• Big picture—is the needle moving?

• Grantees’ impact

• Foundation’s impact

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Effectiveness means…

• Review, learn, improve & communicate• Are foundation’s objectives being met?

• How can the approach be improved?

• How can grantees/sector improve?

• Communicating foundation’s impact

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Supporting the field

• So you can support grantees and/or build your own impact capacity—what else can you do?• Trusts and foundations can lead and define a great

deal of charities’ behaviour

• How can your frameworks improve the sector?- Programme criteria- Application processes- Reporting requirements

We believe charities need to be encouraged to measure their impact together

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What does shared impact measurement look like?

A

B

C

D

E

F

Needs Outcomes

Shared measurement, and harmonised reporting, possible for the same interventions

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Shared impact can also mean impact networks

ANeeds Outcomes

BNeeds Outcomes

CNeeds Outcomes

From this:

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Shared impact can also mean impact networks

A B C

To this:

OutcomesNeeds

Shared measurement is also possible for chains of interventions (and this is how the world really works)

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Questions?

• What barriers do you face around impact?• What would be helpful to you to make progress?• Could shared measurement/harmonised

reporting work for you?• Could you commission impact networks?

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www.philanthropycapital.org

Tris LumleyHead of Development

tlumley@philanthropycapital.orgTel: 020 7620 4883