Commodore Malcolm Williams, Chief Executive, Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society

Reporting impact is something that charities have been doing in their own ways for a long time; some do it very well, others not so well. However, informing your supporters about what you are doing and achieving is fundamental if a charity is to attract and secure long term support.

But “impact measurement” is now becoming a fashionable infatuation in charity circles with countless articles, expensive seminars and conferences, being pushed by “charitable” organisations that see a niche role for themselves and a source of income acting as third party between charities and funders.

I speak as CE of a benevolent society and accept that my knowledge of the whole sector is limited.  However, in my experience benevolent charities are very aware of the impact that their financial support can have whether its replacing the cooker that no longer works, the washing machine that is vital on a daily basis because someone in the house is incontinent, covering bankruptcy fees, a rent deposit for a homeless person, paying for a new door for someone in the outer Hebrides or providing a stairlift so that a widow doesn’t have to crawl upstairs to wash and sleep. Lets take the latter: it solves an immediate practical problem, it restores a sense of dignity, and it may enable that person to stay in their own home. The only way to convey the impact is by description; it’s essentially qualitative and no clever metrics can do that: and we and other charities have been doing that for years.

We are at risk of making a meal out of something that is relatively straightforward requiring commonsense and judgement to convey and assess the worth of what a charity is doing. It also risks the temptation to claim more than is being achieved. For example, in the case of the stairlift quoted above, the temptation might be to claim that it enabled the lady to stay in her own home but that would be very difficult to prove because there are so many factors involved in such a decision: yet to do so might paint a better picture of our achievements and help to secure funding.

Let us take a hypothetical homeless charity; when do you measure your achievement, after one, two, five or ten years – even if you are able to maintain contact with those you have helped. If you are aiming to secure a government contract (and this is no criticism of any specific charity) then you might be tempted to measure your achievement in such a way that it presents you in the best light. After all if you are strictly honest and express doubt will you get the funding?  But to have got one person off the street for even two weeks is surely worth doing and might pay dividends for that person many years later. Charities have to have faith in what they do and so do their funders: it is not a science.

Charities are exhorted to have “theories of change” giving a spurious intellectual backing to what they are doing in my opinion.  Many of these are merely statements of the obvious and would need to be supported by rigorous academic research over many years if they were to have real validity, and few charities can afford that. Does the Emperor have any clothes?

And let us not forget the burden of time and cost placed on small charities, its all very well if you are a major national body that could commission research or have the internal capacity to conduct it. There is a danger that the money gets diverted to them rather than the smaller charities for whom it could have a disproportionately greater impact for the good of society.

But I have a wider concern, and that is, that pushing the “measurement” agenda will discourage funders from supporting worthwhile causes that have difficulty “measuring” their worth. One of the beauties of the charity sector, indeed its essence, is that someone identifies a need and decides to do something about it. If the need is really there and they are making a difference then their charity will, hopefully (but not always), thrive and grow, if not it may wither and die. But so what, only the narrow minded would see that as a waste.

Clearly a key driver in this push for greater measurement is the competition for funding and we are in danger of raising the bar for funding for many causes that cannot be easily or readily assessed but are nonetheless worthy of support: again there has to be an element of faith through commonsense judgement.

The best advice I could give to a potential philanthropist is to go out there and see with your own eyes what is being done and use your judgement to assess its worth. You don’t need a third party to tell you which charity is worth investing in.

Knowing and reporting impact is unquestionably necessary and we have a duty to donors and the wider public to do so but let us keep a sense of proportion and be aware of the possible consequences of raising of the bar for obtaining funding.

Inflation question.

If the net value of a grant-making foundation’s endowment in 2005 was c.£7.4m, what would it need to be in 2010 in order to have maintained its real value?

Is it possible to say what it would need to be at the end of 2012 to have maintained its 2005 value?

Many thanks

Mike Carter, Trustee, Royal Medical Benevolent Fund

Recent revelations that some major grant-making organisations have fallen foul of organised criminals who have set up groups to fraudulently claim grants should reinforce with all trustees the need to carry out due diligence in respect of the grant-making policies and procedures. It should also call into question procedures where only random checks are made to verify the circumstances of applicants.

Writing as former CEO of LionHeart, an occupational benevolent fund, and as a trustee of  the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, I am surprised at the number of larger and small charities who accept applications from individuals by post and dispense grants without a visit by a member of staff or trained volunteer to verify the circumstances of the applicant.

It is necessary in all cases to verify that:

• The applicant is who they say they are
• They live at the given address
• The information that they have provided regarding their personal and financial circumstances is true, and
• That they are eligible for assistance in accordance with the objects of the charity

Trustees are legally responsible for ensuring that funds are spent in accordance with their objects and taking action to prevent fraud.  A review of policies and procedures may be called for in many organisations.

On a similar theme, how many trustees have considered their responsibilities under the Bribery Act that applies to registered charities as well as companies?  Apart from the adverse publicity that may arise from acts of bribery, Trustees could he held responsible under the law for bribery committed by persons associated with the charity. Situations where bribery could occur include the supply of goods and services to the charity, gaining employment, or securing grants or goods in kind.  A defence in court would be that the charity has in place an anti-bribery policy that has been adopted by the Board or Management Committee and that is known and understood by all trustees, volunteers, staff and agents of the charity.

It may seem bureaucratic but Trustees are at risk of prosecution if bribery occurs in their charity and there is no anti-bribery policy. Don’t say “it won’t happen to us” because it could.

(The current 2012 Professional Development Programme is available on the ACF website www.acf.org.uk – the events are open to both ACF members and non-members).

Thank you for taking just a few minutes to answer this very short survey (only two questions!): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PDP2013

If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me at juliana@acf.org.uk. Thank you!

Juliana Bell
ACF

John Copps, Head of NPC's Well-being Measure, New Philanthropy Capital

The concept of well-being and, by extension, measuring well-being has struck a chord right across the UK social sector. It is emerging as important concept in children’s services, driven in part by momentum from the grant-making community.

At a conference at the back-end of 2011 BBC Children in Need’s Head of Policy Shelia-Jane Malley described measuring well-being as a ‘game-changer’ for children’s services. At the heart of government, Sir Gus O’Donnell, Head of the UK Civil Service, has challenged all public officials to take into account measures of well-being in policy decisions.

For me this isn’t the least bit surprising. Improving the quality of life – the well-being – of people is at the heart of what charities and foundations are all about. How people feel and what they think of the world around them matters. For understanding changes in people’s lives, it’s often a far more meaningful measure than exam results or certificates.

A focus on well-being also offers a practical advantage to charities and grant-makers looking to demonstrate their value. How often do you meet grantees that despair at how difficult it is to prove the impact of their work on ‘soft outcomes’, such as self-esteem or quality of relationships? Well-being offers a new approach to this problem.

But for all its apparent new-ness, there is nothing novel about measuring well-being. Academics and psychologists have been doing it for decades. Most of this work has been impenetrable. Like so much else, there’s a job to do to translate this into something meaningful and practical.

With the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Private Equity Foundation, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing at NPC. We have produced the Well-being Measure, an online tool for organisations working with young people age 11 to 16, to measure their impact on areas including self-esteem, emotional well-being and friendships. If successful, we’ll branch out to other groups such as older people or NEETs.

So well-being offers a new language to describe our impact, and measuring the right things is essential. As Sir Gus O’Donnell remarked in relation to well-being ‘if you treasure it, measure it’.

To read more about NPC’s Well-being Measure for 11 to 16 year olds, see www.well-beingmeasure.com or visit the blog.

John Copps is speaking at ACF’s Children and Young People’s Issue-based network Monday 21 May from 12.30pm. More details are available on the ACF website (available to ACF members only).

I hope you may be able to help.

Our recent Disaster Recovery review recommended reserve equipment to be placed off site, and we thought it might be appropriate to do this by means of a swap with a foundation with similar equipment. Does anyone else have these recommendations and if so would they consider this swap with us?

Many thanks
Rob

Gaynor Humphreys, Director, London Funders

Can we be positive about the tough times we are in? Over the last few months, funders in London have been putting their heads together about how to respond to reduced funding in hardest hit parts of the voluntary sector. Every funder, not just those in the public sector, is thinking hard about how to work resources harder and most have made changes somewhere in their systems or policies that reflect their response to tougher times.

Through London Funders there has been discussion about the scope to share strategies or take some joint action. A meeting that could have been entirely bleak, looking at “the perfect storm” affecting advice services (big change in key funding regimes, loss of much local government funding, and greatly increased demand for services) turned out to offer inspiration from a combination of new thinking and a greater sprit of collaboration amongst advice agencies, and interesting investment approaches from funders. There is an undeniable threat to much advice provision, not least from the expected changes in the scope of legal aid, and the phased payment by results model being introduced by the Money Advice Service. Nonetheless, within the advice sector there are also some great examples of fresh thinking and more willingness to collaborate.

Advice services (individually and collectively) are maintaining or even improving income by:

• working services harder, e.g. targeting face-to-face advice (the most expensive provision) at those who really need it and encouraging the use of on-line or telephone advice for those who can cope with it
• finding opportunities to charge for advice, e.g. spot purchasing arrangements with institutional clients
• going “upstream”: saving resources by reaching people at an earlier stage in their need for advice
• systems thinking: checking why a need for advice has arisen and trying to avert recurrences.

Power assistance for change is coming from strategic funders such as the Baring Foundation. Our members want to share methodology and outcomes from the best advice funding (we highlighted Camden’s in-depth review of advice services at our meeting), and see where lateral thinking can attract new givers, e.g. health agencies seeing health benefits from supporting debt advice. A great example of funding that contributes to change is the Strategic Legal Fund for Refugee Children and Young People.

Despite its challenges the advice sector is proving a valuable test bed for constructive reconfiguring of services and it seems that increasing numbers of funders are positioned as investors in sustainable change.

To read the full report of London Funders meeting on the advice sector, “A perfect storm”, visit our website.