Posted 16th January 2020
Social Value UK are the Inspiring Impact partner for England. Inspiring Impact has an ambitious vision to make impact practice the norm within the charity sector. The current phase of the programme is running from 2018-2021.
The programme is being delivered by 6 partners across the UK, Social Value UK, New Philanthropy Capital, Evaluation Support Scotland, NCVO Charities Evaluation Service, Wales Council for Voluntary Action and Community Evaluation Northern Ireland. To learn more about the partners head to ‘Who we are’ on the Inspiring Impact website. Learn more about Inspiring Impact here.
In this post, we wish to give an insight into what the Inspiring Impact programme will look like over this coming year.
Key Challenge for Inspiring Impact in England for 2020:
More and more charities, social enterprises and funders want to understand and improve the impact that they make. We all want to do that in a way that’s proportionate to our organisation’s activities and resources.
We’ve heard from many organisations that engaging colleagues and making data and learning part of day-to-day activities can feel difficult.
Here are some of the challenges we’ve come across:
- Impact practice isn’t seen as a priority. It is seen as an additional burden.
- The CEO or trustees don’t champion impact practice.
- There is a lack of buy-in or ownership from frontline staff.
- There is too much information from different sources and people don’t know who to listen to.
- There is mixed understanding of impact between different stakeholders
- Succession planning for VCSE sector orgs is a challenge
What is the focus of the 2020 programme:
Inspiring Impact is here to help. If you’re trying to do things better, we can provide inspiration, online resources and space to learn and share with others. We’re really excited to focus on a couple of things in particular:
- How we can make our evaluation work relevant and sensible for our organisation.
- How we can make impact practice a day-to-day activity that is valued and shared across our organisation.
What are we planning for 2020:
In 2019, the Inspiring Impact programme visited 6 new locations across England. In 2020 we aim to build on the momentum developed in 2019 and taking the next steps to work together to develop VCSE organisation practice beyond the introductory roadshow sessions, and to help organisations to address the challenges they have raised during the first year of the programme. For 2020, SVUK are planning a combined approach to deliver the Inspiring Impact programme:
- 2020 ‘embedding’ sessions at our 2019 roadshow locations
- A series of online interactive webinars
- Inspiring Impact sessions at VCSE sector events across England
To keep up to date with all things Inspiring Impact, please head to our dedicated Inspiring Impact page and keep an eye out for updates to our Inspiring Impact calendar on this page, our Twitter and in our newsletters.