Helping grantees focus on impact

1. Helping grantees focus on impact North East Funders Forum Sept 2011 Tris Lumley 7 September 2011

2. 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

3. Funders are part of a cycle (& system)

4. 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

5. 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

6. A framework for thinking about support • What are your aims for providing support? • What are the principles of your approach? • What barriers will you encounter? • How will you measure what your support achieves? • What’s the right support package for you?

7. 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.

8. 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

9. How can charities overcome barriers to impact measurement?

10. We found there are common steps towards a strong impact approach

11. Measure impact of support What are your aims in providing support? Diagnosis of grantee needs/capacity What are the principles behind your approach? Consider barriers and set expectations What does your support package look like? Provide support • Measure your impact • Improve reporting • Understand success • Build grantees’ skills • For example: • Training • Internal or external evaluation • Mandatory or optional? • Flexible or standardised? • Get involved or stay hands off? A Funder Plus approach to impact might look like this…

12. 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?

13. What does effectiveness mean for foundations? • What’s the problem you’re trying to address? • What do you do to address it? • What are you achieving? • How do you know? • How are you learning and improving?

14. What does effectiveness mean for foundations? • To answer the questions you’ll need • Clear objectives • Defined strategy to achieve them • Track progress towards them • Gather evidence of progress/impact • Review, learn, improve and communicate

15. What is an effective foundation?

16. A family foundation began its journey by experimenting with what worked

17. A venture philanthropy foundation strengthens effective charities

18. 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?

19. Effectiveness means… • Operating principles focused on impact • Identify effective charities aligned with objectives • Appropriate type of funding • Smart processes • Support to improve grantees?

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. What does shared impact measurement look like? A B C Needs Outcomes D E F Shared measurement, and harmonised reporting, possible for the same interventions

24. A B C Needs Needs Needs Outcomes Outcomes Outcomes Shared impact can also mean impact networks From this:

25. Shared impact can also mean impact networks To this: Needs Outcomes A B C Shared measurement is also possible for chains of interventions (and this is how the world really works)

26. 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?

27. www.philanthropycapital.org Tris Lumley Head of Development tlumley@philanthropycapital.org Tel: 020 7620 4883