About four years ago I wrote about the negative press that civil society organisations were getting in the UK press and what this meant for the sector. Recently I saw a headline that read something like “Charities are on their way out.” It reminded me again that we take the future Read more…
In May last year I wrote about how commissioners could improve their commissioning of external evaluations for social impact. It struck me that the advice I gave was quite technical (well it was for the UK Evaluation Society’s journal) and there were a few things not included that most of Read more…
It is easy and tempting to put everything into a nice little box with a label on it. Makes it seem manageable, do-able. At least until we try to assess whether we’ve actually made any improvements. Most of time the changes that we thought would happen somehow don’t seem to Read more…
More often these days small organisations are being challenged to ‘prove it’ when it comes to the results that they say they have achieved. Many can’t and some won’t. For decades now larger social impact organisations have been developing and embedding monitoring and evaluation into their structures, systems and processes. Read more…
Content for this blog post comes from an unpublished paper that I have edited and revised for Aperio Group (UK) Ltd For the last two decades there has been a drive to increase the amount of private investment and philanthropy going into the third sector and development sector. Social investment Read more…
Every year it seems that social impact makes huge strides forwards! In thinking through the past twelve months and looking ahead the following trends have emerged, at least from my point of view! Getting better at measuring complex issues: There is a growing acceptance that tackling and measuring individual issues such Read more…
There are a lot of people these days saying that they are helping organisations to measure or prove their social impact (disclaimer: I am one of them!). In truth it isn’t some sort of rocket science and I’ve come to realise recently that the most important thing that I can Read more…
I’ve been bombarded with articles recently about how ‘reframing’ something, like evaluation, and calling it ‘design-based’ will inspire new ways to track and do innovation. Really. I’m mean, really? This particular article went on to list evaluation as both a product and a service and tried to outline why this Read more…
I’d like to think that we are all working in civil society because we want to see a better world: fairer, equal, sustainable communities that have a better quality of life and opportunity to fulfil their purpose in life; a sustained environment that protects biodiversity and manages climate change. I’d Read more…
We all respond to the situation that we find ourselves in, and that is true of any intervention that you might design: it is a response, framed in a particular way to a situation that you and others have identified as needing improvement, challenge, changing. But how much do you Read more…