The Inspiring Impact Group is made up of a range of voluntary sector organisations who provide advice and information for charities on impact and evaluation.  The group aims to provide leadership in the area of impact assessment and measurement over the next ten years.

The Inspiring Impact Group is currently considering whether to encourage charities to set aside 5 – 10% of funding for the purposes of evaluation and impact reporting. The next meeting of the group will take place in June.

The Children’s Play Programme Evaluation was commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund in September 2008. The final report of the three year evaluation is now available.

The Children’s Play Programme was funded by the Big Lottery Fund and was part of a wider £155 million Children’s Play Initiative, with the aim of raising the profile of children’s play. The evaluation found that the Children’s Play Programme played a significant role in raising awareness of children’s play at a local level. The programme also led to an expansion of open access play, and engaged children and families in decision making about play spaces.

While engaging local communities was seen as a sucess factor in promoting play opportunities, nearly a fifth of portfolio leads survyed for the evaluation cited negative attitudes to play amongst residents.

You can read the full report here

The National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) has published an evalaution of their tender support project. The tender support project is part of a wider programme of support and aimed to improve bidding practises of third sector organisations.  The report sets out the impact of support offered by the project to 148 voluntary and community groups.

Organisations accessing the project were said to lack confidence in the bidding process, and also found it difficult to invest time in developing skills in this area because of the risks associated with an unsuccessful bid. NAVCA appointed consultants to deliver the support, which was used to increase basic knowledge and awareness of tendering processes, help organisations to prepare for the process of developing a tender and helping organisations to take a more strategic approach to the whole process.   

The evaluation found that all of the organisations that received support from NAVCA said that their bidding processes had been improved as a result of the support received. The vast majority (97%) of organisations also said that they would like support in the future in particular at the time of completing a tender.

The full report can be read here

The National CAMHS Support Service (NCSS) have developed a Tackling Stigma Toolkit which will be officially launched at the NCSS National Young People’s Participation Conference in Leicester on 28 October. The toolkit has been developed from the Tackling Stigma Framework, designed by Dr Fiona Warner-Gale (2006).

The Tackling Stigma Toolkit is for all professionals, partnerships and organisations who commission and provide children’s and young people’s mental health services. It aids the development of a planned and informed approach to tackling the stigma of children’s and young people’s mental health problems.

Ecorys in partnership with CAMHS Evidence Based practise Unit (CAMHS EBPU) evaluated use of the Tackling Stigma Framework across the six pilot areas where it was initially implemented. The evaluation found that the framework has been beneficial in changing children’s and young people’s beliefs about mental health and stigma.

Click here to download the Tackling Stigma Toolkit

Click here to download the Tackling Stigma Evaluation Report

Ecorys are pleased to announce that the final evaluation report for Reaching Communities in England and Northern Ireland has now been published.  A range of evaluation evidence sources were used in the research, including programme data from 1,436 projects, feedback from 804 projects via annual surveys, and 37 case study visits.

The evaluation found that overall, Reaching Communities has supported a diverse range of projects to achieve an array of positive outcomes for an extremely broad range of target groups and local communities. Over 50 different types of activity were delivered by the programme ranging from advocacy to artwork; languages to life skills; recycling to respite care and youth diversion to volunteering.

Click here to download the final report

Reaching Communities projects could look at using standardised questions for evaluating your work. Instead of reinventing the wheel, have a look at some of the online question banks which contain hundreds of examples of questions you could use to save you designing your own. Try using a search engine to find some.

There are also lots of ‘standardised scales’ you could use. For example the Warwick Edinburgh mental wellbeing scale  contains sets of questions that you could use t help measure beneficiaries’ wellbeing (and there are many others depending on what area you work in). You could then track your projects’ results aginst other projects’ results.

If you need help finding something more specific email us at reaching.communities@ecotec.com

In our recent Reaching Communities networking event in Birmingham projects expressed an interest in the social return on investment model for measuring the benefits of a project. This is an evaluation technique which projects could use, as it builds on working with stakeholders to identify the financial benefits of a project for making a case to future funders. Projects could look at the approved / accredited method and tools outlined here

Three networking events being held by Ecorys for Reaching Communities projects are proving really popular. Events in London on 28th July and in Manchester on 29th July are already full and with waiting lists. However we do still have a few last minute spaces at our event in Birmingham on 19th July. Each event has been designed to meet the needs of projects with a chance to meet other projects, share experiences and learn more about the findings of Ecorys’ four year evaluation of the programme.

ECOTEC* are pleased to launch this new blog for all Reaching Communities projects. The blog will contain all of the info from our old website, plus lots of exciting new items. You can find out here about our forthcoming events, our video case studies and our evaluation findings from the overall programme evaluation.  If you have news to share you can contact us through the blog or comment on other postings. So…get in touch!

*ECOTEC changed their name on 4th October 2010 to Ecorys.