The next three yearsLondon Funders Research and Evaluation NetworkTris Lumley and Cecilie Hestbaek, NPC3 December 2015

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AGENDA

1Introduction and revisiting the background of Inspiring Impact

10 mins

2How are we doing so far? 5 mins

3The next three years + Q&A 15 mins

4Discussion 40 mins

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• Inspiring Impact Northern Ireland

• Evaluation Services Scotland

BACKGROUND

• Inspiring Impact is a 10-year UK-wide programme that aims to make good impact practice the norm for charities and social enterprises by 2022. This means:

• Encouraging more organisations to plan and measure their social impact

• Use the data they collect to increase their impact

• Share what they learn with the rest of the sector to ensure every pound spent makes the greatest possible difference to people’s lives

What does good practice look like?

How do we know what we need to measure?

How do we find the right tools to measure our impact?

How can we compare with and learn from others?

How can funders promote impact? How can they

measure their own impact?

Impact leadership

Coordinating support

Data, tools and systems

Shared measurement

Funders, commissioners and investors

What does good practice look like?

What does good practice look like?

How do we know what we need to measure?

How do we know what we need to measure?

How do we find the right tools to measure our impact?

How do we find the right tools to measure our impact?

How can we compare with and learn from others?

How can we compare with and learn from others?

How can funders promote impact? How can they

measure their own impact?

How can funders promote impact? How can they

measure their own impact?

Impact leadership

Impact leadership

Coordinating support

Coordinating support

Data, tools and systems

Data, tools and systems

Shared measurement

Shared measurement

Funders, commissioners and investors

Funders, commissioners and investors

Outside England

NCVO

CES

Substance

NPC

ACF

The partnership and work strands

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MOST POPULAR RESOURCES

Guides

The Code of Good Impact Practice sets out a cycle of impact practice and eight high level principles to follow, along with practical guidance to help charities and social enterprises implement it. 

Funders’ Principles and Drivers of Impact Practice is designed to encourage improvement in impact practice by offering practical and useful guidance for funders on understanding, measuring and increasing their own impact, and supporting their grantees and investees to do the same.

Online resources

Measuring Up! is an online, step-by-step self-assessment tool that gives you an accurate and detailed picture of where your impact practice is going well, and where it could be improved.

The Impact Hub is a one-stop shop for impact resources and tools. Users can filter by category, sector, format or cost and/or search keywords, individual resource names or features, while resource providers can add new listings.

Inspiring Impact offers a wealth of free resources to help you improve your impact practice. This includes step-by step guides to impact measurement, and over 200 measurement tools.

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REACH—DETAILED

Figure (rounded)

Change over last 12 months

Description

Building a network

289,882 106% Page views / website hits since our new site launched in June 2013

49,274 85% Number of website users (unique visits) since launch

1,700 17% Supporters signed up to our network, via our website

1,850 33% Twitter followers

763 30% LinkedIn group members

Providing resources

7,156 174% Downloads of the Code of Good Impact Practice since it launched

3,193 137% Downloads of the Funders’ Principles in since it launched

18,719 159% Views of the Measuring Up! web page

1,768 53% People signed up to Measuring Up!

15,426 202% Views of the Impact Hub web page

Inspiring Impact has spent three years building up a wealth of free resources to make impact practice easier and cheaper for charities, social enterprises and funders. Our main focus now is to ensure that all these organisations are aware of the resources so they can access them if relevant. The output statistics in the table below gives an indication of the extent to which our most popular resources are being used.

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TRENDS IN REACH

The Inspiring Impact theory of change depends heavily on reach. Online presence is the key way that we engage with organisations, and so it is important for us to monitor outputs such as the number of visitors to

our site and followers on social media. We look at trends since the programme launched, and use the historical output data to plan future work to increase reach.

Although our online reach continues to grow steadily, we know that outside the big urban centres, we still need to improve our reach. This is one of the things we aim to address in Inspiring Impact year 4-7, and

through our new sector partners we will get an opportunity to reach a much wider audience.

Sep-12

Mar-13

Jun 2013 (new

web

site)

Sep-13

Mar-14

Jul-14

Dec-14

Mar-15

Jul-15

Nov-15

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

Website hits since our launch

Sep-12

Mar-13

Jun 2013 (new

web

site)

Sep-13

Mar-14

Jul-14

Dec-14

Mar-15

Jul-15

Nov-15

0200400600800

100012001400160018002000

Supporters signed up to our network

Twitter followers

LinkedIn group members

Website hits since launch Network since launch

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THE NEXT THREE YEARS

• In August 2015, thanks to a £600,000 grant over three years from the Big Lottery Fund, Inspiring Impact embarked on year four of the programme

• The new, and larger, grant will support us in our scaled-up ambitions:

– we will focus on ensuring that everyone who can benefit from these resources is aware of them and has support to use them. This means significantly expanding our reach and the uptake of our resources, but also developing ways for small organisations to get tailored support to use Inspiring Impact’s site

• We will do this through continuing to run our five core strands of work but, in addition to that, also develop

– a network of organisations dedicated to improving impact practice in their sector: the Impact Champions

– The most committed and ambitious Impact Champions have a chance to become sub-sector partners: we want large organisations who have good impact practice to help smaller charities and social enterprises in their sector (ie, disability or mental health) to improve the way they collect and use impact data

Network partners, including Impact Champions

• Impact Champions: Champion the vision of Inspiring Impact and are committed to measuring their own impact, with strong buy-in from the organisation’s leadership.

Sub-sector partners:

• Key organisations in for example youth, mental health or sport who are willing to take on an active role as our link in the sector and develop impact practice projects

8Inspiring Impact - title of the document (can be changed under view/header and footer. Add date here

CONSULTATION EVENT

On 17 November 2015 we invited our network to a consultation event to get their thoughts and ideas on how Inspiring Impact should look like in the future. We talked about our ambitions for the next three years, and in small groups discussed the following themes:

• How Inspiring Impact can expand its reach

• How we can tailor support by sub-sectors and embed the programme within these

• How charities—large and small—can collaborate to achieve this.

We were keen to get the input from everyone interested, not just those at the event, so we also set up an online survey and shared the link on social media and in an extra mail-out to our over 3000 newsletter sign-ups.

The write-up of the discussion and the survey responses will be published on Inspiring Impact’s website shortly.

The recommendations will feed into Inspiring Impact’s board meeting on 10 December.

9Inspiring Impact - title of the document (can be changed under view/header and footer. Add date here

DISCUSSION

• How can Inspiring Impact improve its reach to small, local charities so more of them are aware of the help they can get from our resources, and have capacity and skills to access and use them?

– Do funders have a role in this?

• How can funders engage with, support, and get support from Inspiring Impact's sub-sector and impact champions work in the next three years?

vTHANK YOUAny questions? Email inspiringimpact@thinknpc.org

London, November 2015

APPENDIX

Sported sub-sector partnership (with NPC as II delivery partner)

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Build on Inspiring Impact resources. Convene 8-10 organisations F2F= Peer Learning Group

Identify 10 organisations appropriate for intensive coaching and peer learning pilot. Start with a face-to-face workshop to build relationships and engagement. Develop and test learning resources.

?

SPORTED SUB-SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

Peers

Coach

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Build on Inspiring Impact resources. Convene 8-10 organisations F2F= Peer Learning Group

Provide intensive coaching support. Migrate group online. Develop and test online tools.

SPORTED SUB-SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

Migrate the group online. Coach provides ongoing intensive support, and develops further learning materials. Through this, develop an approach to support peer learning and maintain engagement.

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Build on Inspiring Impact resources. Convene 8-10 organisations F2F= Peer Learning Group

Provide intensive coaching support. Migrate group online. Develop and test online tools.

Promote e-learning platform to membership. Incentivise engagement.

SPORTED SUB-SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

Communications to launch and raise awareness of the online learning resource. Encourage use of resources and peer-to-peer contact. Motivate and incentivise usage, offering workshops as a ‘carrot’.

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Build on Inspiring Impact resources. Convene 8-10 organisations F2F= Peer Learning Group

Offer light-touch support. Create regional peer learning and coaching hubs.

Provide intensive coaching support. Migrate group online. Develop and test online tools.

Promote e-learning platform to membership. Incentivise engagement.

SPORTED SUB-SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

Lighter-touch forms of support available to those who sign up. This lighter ‘coach’ role could either be managed centrally, or through regional hubs.

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Build on Inspiring Impact resources. Convene 8-10 organisations F2F= Peer Learning Group

Offer light-touch support. Create regional peer learning and coaching hubs.

Provide intensive coaching support. Migrate group online. Develop and test online tools.

Promote e-learning platform to membership. Incentivise engagement.

Hold regional workshops to share good practice and encourage peers.

SPORTED SUB-SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

?

Hold 7-10 regional workshops for members who have engaged with the resources. Get feedback on the use of the e-learning resources; encourage -peer contact; and offer advice to members on specific challenges.

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What works/ why when tailoring Inspiring Impact resources to a sub-sector

How to modify learning tools for organisations of varying capacity, ambition, activity

The role of coaches in convening peers, supporting and maintaining engagement. Where/ when are they most useful

Whether the coach role and the peer-to-peer elements work well together, and which is most important to users

Which approaches to incentivising engagement with resources and evaluation practice work, if any

How online and offline approaches work best together

LESSONS FOR INSPIRING IMPACT

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UPDATED PROJECT PLAN