Measuring your Impact & Outcomes How you know you are making a difference Jill Davies – South Hams CVS

Workshop aims  range of approaches to better understand your impact  measuring and evaluating what you do  capturing ‘soft outcomes’

What can Voluntary & Community Sector Groups do for commissioners?

 Help them achieve targets  Add value  Reach further into communities  Help their resources go further  Bring about change

Changes Occur in: Individuals Families Communities Organisations Environment Policy Areas: Health Behaviour Attitude& self perception Knowledge & Skills Circumstance

Indicators Exercise In pairs: 1. Look at your list of changes that your organisation contributes to, mark each according to how easy they are to evidence. E/H 2. Choose an outcome each and decide what indicators you could use to measure these

Decisions  What to measure & for who  How to collect data, how to analyse & report  Who to ask, who to involve  When to collect data, review & report  Where to report & publish results

Tips  Put outcomes and impact at the centre of what you do  Get buy in from everyone in the organisation & don’t forget external views  Create a robust monitoring framework for both Quantitative & Qualitative data  Trial tools which you use  Decide how to best demonstrate soft outcomes to stakeholders

Resources  Charities Evaluation Service  New Philanthropy Capital  Outcomes stars  Social Investment on Return  New Economics Foundation