The Value of Cultural Education

We’ve been pleased to support the Northumberland Cultural Education Partnership through 2023 and 2024 with an evolving portfolio of work to evaluate its delivery work and explore its role and priorities going forward.

One of the most interesting strands of the work was to produce an external evaluation of a very interesting project involving hundreds of young people across a number of schools in the county. Whenever we undertake evaluation work we tend to have two things in mind. Firstly, we want to establish the extent to which the project has fulfilled its objectives and outcomes. Secondly, we hope that the reports we write might also become a resource for learning, made available to a wider network of stakeholders who have an interest in the subject matter, in this case, arts & culture education.

The project being evaluated was really fascinating as it included the use of a unique outcomes framework developed by the innovative arts charity Mortal Fools. Seeking to understand the links between arts participation and wellbeing the model, called ‘PERMA’ invited young people and teachers to reflect regularly on Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievement.

An enormous amount of data had been collected over the course of the project and a big part of our task was to analyse and interpret it. Presenting complex data in simple ways is something we consider very important at Goodlabs - it’s a running theme through most of our assignments. In this case we used ‘stock and flow’ charts to demonstrate the correlation between observations, highlighting distribution ranges as well as averages. The advantage of this approach is to be able to quickly see the general trend as well as any outliers.

If you’re having challenges understanding and communicating the story that your data is telling drop us a line, we’d love to help you get to grips with it.

The Impact of Community Organising

It was a pleasure to be in east London for the launch of a substantial new report describing the positive impact that can be made when local churches begin to employ the principles of community organising.

We’ve been providing consultancy support to the team at the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC) who, along with Citizens UK, have been running the ‘Organising for Growth’ project.

Funded by the Church of England, the project has worked within six parishes located in communities experiencing a range of complex social and economic challenges. However, the fascinating thing about Community Organising methodology is that even in the most difficult of situations it steadfastly refuses to become deficit-defined. Rather, there is a hope-full attitude, rooted in a strong belief about the inherent capacity people possess to change the circumstances around them, especially by working together. This belief is strengthened within a faith-based context that honours the essential dignity and equality of each person.

Having completed an interim evaluation in 2021 this has been a particularly longitudinal study that has provided a special opportunity to observe changes occurring as a sort of time-lapse. Having been first introduced to some of the key people involved in the work more than three years ago it has been fascinating to observe their journeys.

The event itself, inclusive and ecumenical in nature, was a real pleasure to be part of. Whilst hosted in an Anglican context (the historic St. George in the East, Shadwell) key parts were played by Catholic and Pentecostal clergy and congregations too. There were some lovely, poignant moments, and a lot of joy, as people reflected with gratitude on meaningful change taking place at the intersection of the community and the church.

Notes:

Click here to find out more about the work of CTC

Click here to find out more about Organising for Growth and download the full report.

Citizens UK defines Community Organising as:
“Bringing people together to win change. This means building community-led solutions to big and small problems, that work for everyone”. Find out more at: citizensuk.org/about-us/what-is-community-organising/

Decisions, decisions...

We know that choosing a CRM product can be bewildering. There are lots of different products out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. To help steer you onto the right track take a few minutes to look over our Cimpl decision tree. It will help you make an initial assessment of whether our product should be added to your shortlist. And remember, we offer a live demo even if you’re still just browsing.

Complex Needs, Cimpl Data

People can be complicated, but data shouldn’t be

A charity in the West Midlands recently asked for our support to transform their data management practices in relation to the recording of interactions with their clients. Their service users have multiple and complex needs, often relating to mental health, addiction, or both. A range of services are offered including 1:1 support, group work and also accommodation.

Through our Cimpl CRM for charities we were able to migrate them over to a more efficient and organised way of operating. No more client data hiding in Word documents hidden on Sharepoint, in Teams or even worse, on staff C drives. Now the whole team has role-related access to the clients relevant to their service. For management, reporting has been brought to life with realtime dashboards providing insight into service demand month by month. Clients presenting risks are more easily identified meaning that creating a safer environment for everyone.

The moral of the story is that whilst people may be complex, data can still be Cimpl!

CRM for Veteran's Charity

Charities come in all shapes and sizes, serving all sorts of different groups in society. We were pleased to be asked to support a Veterans charity for the first time.

Veteran’s HQ Liverpool provides much-needed support to hundreds of ex-servicemen and women right across the Merseyside region. The leadership team of the charity and its committed volunteers were beginning to struggle to keep track of all the many diverse requests for support and a busy schedule of participation in a range of groups and activities.

Using our Cimpl CRM application which utilises the security and versatility of the Salesforce platform we were able to deliver a user-friendly and cost-effective solution. In order to ensure that new users to the system had the best possible start we travelled to Liverpool to deliver in-person training.

In particular the in-built report and dashboard features that Cimpl offers have transformed the way that the charity reports back to its various funders, really taking the sting out of producing detailed reports on activity and impact.

Don’t be shy to get in touch if you’d like a demo of how our Cimpl CRM could make a difference to the way your charity manages its data.

The Power of Messaging

Cimpl has a new messaging partner: ValueText

We are always working on ways to improve our CRM application: Cimpl. One of the things we’ve been wanting to add for some time is an integrated messaging service as an alternative to email.

This requirement was really important for a new charity CRM client, a mental health charity based in North Wales. They need to keep in close contact with their service users as their 1:1 and group programmes tend to be quite dynamic. For their service users email is not a channel they use often for communication, but they all have mobile phones. Two-way chatting and also the ability to bulk message to a wide range of different lists was essential.

After testing a number of third party products we chose to go with ValueText. The quality of their solution, ease of use, great customer service and most of all highly competitive pricing (including a charity discount) made them stand out from the competition.

Having live tested this solution for several weeks we’re now really happy to offer it to all of our Cimpl customers who also wish to make the most of the power of messaging!

5 Steps to Increasing Your Impact

By our MD, Matt Wilson. 10 minute read.

As we enter 2024, there is more work than ever for charities to be undertaking. Goodlabs gears its support towards smaller charities operating in frontline service delivery across a range of sectors from young people to older people, from mental health to domestic abuse, with much more besides. In every area, we see the cost of living biting, statutory services creaking, and charities bravely stepping up to support people at the sharp end. We also see every pound that charities fundraise having to go further, and every hour they work having to achieve more.

Against that backdrop, I’ve reflected on the 5 things charity leaders can do to ensure their organisations make a bigger impact this year.

Step 1: review your strategy to ensure impact is at its heart

In a typical year, I support four or five charities to review or write afresh their strategic plan. The question at the heart of every charity strategy ought to be “What is the impact we will make?”

I see lots of strategies with objectives and goals dealing with money to be raised, growth to be achieved, staff to be recruited, governance to be restructured and so on and so on. All those points may well be important, but if they are divorced from the central question of impact to be made then a dangerous risk emerges: your organisation may find itself slipping into merry-go-round mode.

Sadly, I see this too many times, annual reports with lovely infographics that show “we’ve been very busy” but behind which there is very little evidence of whether that busyness has any effect.

So what can you do?

Why not take an afternoon out of the office with a handful of key team members who aren’t afraid to be honest. Look over your strategy together asking:

1.    Where are our beneficiaries in this plan? Are they in the foreground, the background or underground!

2.    How good of a job does our strategy do in terms of focussing on the dimensions of personal and social change that our purpose expects us to deliver on?

3.    How clear is the relationship between the strategic objectives and goals we have set ourselves and the impact that we want to make by the expiry date of the plan?

If you find that your strategy already does a great job of fulfilling each of these three tests, fantastic, you can go into the year with confidence. If you don’t, then you’ve gained some really valuable insight into where you need to give some leadership attention in the months ahead.

That insight can be the first step on a journey of improvement towards making this year truly impactful.

Step 2: Get more from your Theory of Change

Since first making waves in the charity sector about 10 years ago Theory of Change has become a staple part of the strategic toolkit for every social change organisation that takes its work seriously. Funders too continue to show a keen interest because a Theory of Change can make clear the way that a charity reliably delivers its impact according to a well-understood journey.

Every Theory of Change practitioner takes a slightly different approach but we are all basically just riffing on a common underlying model. Each year, I help to create ToC’s for around half a dozen organisations. Over time, I’ve come to see where the value tends to be delivered, and when a Theory of Change may become an unhelpful distraction. There is a very real risk that, if not done well, a Theory of Change document can do the opposite of making your work easier to understand – it can make it more confusing!

A well-produced Theory of Change will utilise words, shapes and graphics to clearly visualise the answers to important WHY, WHO, WHERE, WHAT and HOW questions. In doing this it ought to straightforwardly lead the reader through a series of related processes toward the ultimate question: SO WHAT? I would always expect the answer to this question to be described in thematic terms connected to the impact that has been made in the life of an individual, group or community as a result of supportive intervention.

The other big benefit of giving time to working on a Theory of Change is more of a byproduct of the process of putting it together. Always take time to consider who you will involve in creating your Theory of Change as being involved will offer a double benefit:

1) Those involved will better understand the way all the moving parts of your delivery model work together to create impact, and

2) You will gain too, from the valuable insights they will bring into specific parts of the process that may otherwise have remained a bit of a mystery.

Step 3: Take hey thematic, approach to Outputs and Outcomes

Much of my impact consulting work is done with the Lloyds Bank Foundation’s “Enhance” programme. They’re a really great funder, committed to supporting charities holistically with practical as well as financial assistance. When I get introduced to a charity for an impact-related assignment one of the first things I’ll do is a quick matrix audit of all the Outputs and Outcomes the charity is being expected to report on for all their various funders. This frequently involves long lists of data points being tracked. In one case I know of, over 200! Local commissioning teams can be a nightmare for over-monitoring, and UKSPF projects, which I’m dealing with a lot, seem to have been created in the ninth circle of hell!

A large part of the challenge relates to making sense of poorly articulated frameworks. Outputs (measures of what has happened) are frequently confused with Outcomes (what changed as a result of what happened). Numerous targets may exist that require an answer from somewhere e.g. “Number of beneficiaries with X”. If sufficient thought isn’t given to where these answers will come from the reporting back process can become incredibly stressful.

Following on from the last step about working on your Theory of Change, make sure that you’ve identified a set of clear impact themes that describe the difference your work makes e.g. a Mental Health theme, a Work Skills theme etc. These themes are like labelled suitcases into which you can pack Outputs and Outcomes that belong together. As you undertake the sorting task try to eliminate duplication. Do you really need one indicator labelled ‘Self-worth’ and another labelled ‘Self-esteem’? Codify the themes using numbers so that you can straightforwardly collect and connect evidence back to the theme, e.g. “Theme 2. Physical Wellbeing; 2.1 Improved Hygiene; 2.2 Improved Sleep….” When I’m working with a client I usually push for brevity with the expectation that we might be able to whittle down to no more than around 6 themes maximum, each with 4 to 8 items inside.

With this task completed you can go ahead and book that meeting with the commissioner or grant manager of the funded work you’re delivering. Explain to them the process you’ve been going through and the reason why.

Your goal is to help them understand that:

(a)  you are totally committed to tracking the impact of your work

(b)  you can be trusted to get on with it without the need for (their) external micromanagement

Once they’re convinced of these things they’re more likely to be willing to flex around what and when you report back to them, and potentially to reduce the number of data points down to the things that matter most in terms of impact.

Step 4: Get your Forms in order

Over the last three weeks I’ve covered Strategy, Theory of Change and Output & Outcomes. Today’s advice will focus on probably the most undervalued aspect of impact management within any nonprofit: Forms. They’re the Cinderella of the impact world. Often completely overlooked and yet with a bit of fairy dust they can become the star of your impact ball. Ok, enough Disney, let’s get down to business...

It’s impossible to demonstrate your impact without gathering evidence of what’s happening as a result of your work being delivered. As the French forensic science pioneer Edmond Locard was fond of saying “Tout contact laisse une trace”… “Every contact leaves a trace”. Forms are our best friend when it comes to collecting evidence consistently and systematically over time.

Here are my top 3 forms tips:

1. Think people first. Give sufficient thought to how the form will actually be used in the field. Who will be completing it? If it’s a beneficiary - what is their literacy level? Are your questions or statements (i.e. agree/disagree) phrased unambiguously? If staff are completing the forms are they properly trained? Do they have sufficient time to complete the form without rushing and turning it into a “ticky box” exercise?

2. Codify carefully. Ensure that your forms (and/or individual items on them) link back to specific items on  your outputs and outcomes framework. This is where using digital form technologies really deliver efficiency savings over manual methods. Doing this will take all the pain out of reporting results later.  

3. Be consistent. Whether using off the peg assessments such as SWEMWBS or self-designed metrics the key is to stick with a method and avoid either (a) chopping and changing, or (b) collecting patchy data. If you get the feeling that a form isn’t working well for you and/or your beneficiaries then don’t kneejerk react. Ensure you complete the full cohort before making changes, otherwise you risk making your dataset worthless. Similarly, you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone of your impact if you only have data from 20% of those you’ve worked with. 

Step 5: Upgrade your tech, let a CRM do the heavy lifting for you!

First let’s recap… We began with a strategy review, considered your Theory of Change, looked at your Outputs & Outcomes and then considered collecting better evidence by getting your forms in order. Now the final piece of the puzzle – upgrade your tech – get a smart CRM that will do the heavy lifting of impact reporting for you.

When I founded Goodlabs in 2017 and began working with my first client I also had my first encounter with the challenge of trying to report on Impact using a system that simply wasn’t designed for that purpose. It was a situation that I would encounter again and again and again. I’ve seen all sorts of cobbled together solutions involving Spreadsheets, Google Forms, Survey Monkeys, and piles of paper – often within the same organisation, and sometimes when £££ thousands have been spent on a so-called CRM that isn’t fit for purpose! Days if not weeks of painstaking work goes into producing impact monitoring reports for funders and commissioners. But it doesn't have to be like this!

This is one reason why I look back on the enforced lockdowns of 2020/2021 with a kind of gratitude. Yes, it was an awful time on so many levels, but for many of us it provided time out in which we could think and innovate. For me it gave the opportunity to begin designing a CRM system that would deliver all the common things that my impact clients needed. It gave me the chance to reach out to some smart people to help beginning to develop a working model. Following a number of live trials in 2022 the product finally launched in January of 2023 under the name “Cimpl” with a tagline mission statement “Making Impact Easier”.

The best way to gain consistent and reliable insight into the impact your services of having on the lives of your beneficiaries is to embed your monitoring tools within delivery. Make it part of your daily or weekly interactions with them. Make it easy for your team members to note their observations of change in just a couple of clicks. Make it easy for those you’re helping to give feedback on how they’re feeling at different intervals in their journey. Cimpl is designed from the ground up to do all that.

Right now we’re working on our 17th system implementation, with several more in the queue. It’s exciting to see organisations making the switch and feeling the benefit of Cimpl’s functionality relieving their long-felt sense of impact-anxiety.

If you’d like to take a look at Cimpl for yourself to see how it could serve your Charity or Social Enterprise just click here.

This article was first created as a 5-week mini series for our LinkedIn followers.

The Impact of Arts

Goodlabs MD, Matt Wilson, at Gosforth Civic Theatre

Gosforth Civic Theatre is a fantastic arts venue on the north side of Newcastle. It has recently undergone a huge refurb project and has a great atmosphere. The vibe of the place is about far more than the new internal layout - it’s all about the people. GCT is home to Liberdade, an innovative arts charity that supports people with learning disabilities. We were delighted to be introduced as part of our ongoing work with the Lloyds Bank Foundation.

Our work with GCT was twofold…

First, we facilitated a full review of their existing theory of change. Our objective was to ensure that it really accurately and accessibly described the impact being made in the lives of programme participants. In practice this meant mapping out the different participant groups, both PWLD and not. Matt facilitated a staff workshop to develop a draft set of outcomes and the team followed this up with some specific engagement with their LD groups to sense check it. The final draft revolved around five “I CAN” statements: I can be happy, I can be healthy, I can be me, I can be creative, I can belong.

The other half of the work related to preparation for the shift to a CRM system that can be used to monitor participation and measure impact. This involved looking at the wide range of activities that are taking place, how they are currently being recorded, what data is being held at the moment about participants, and how all this might interface with the distinctly different data operation around the marketing of shows, the sale of tickets and receiving feedback from audiences.

It’s always great to work with charities that are so embedded in their local communities and getting on with their work with a sense of vision and of joy. This really came across in this project :-)

Cimpl arrives in Cumbria

The roster of charities around the UK switching to our Cimpl CRM continues to grow with the latest deployment on behalf of a charity in Kendal serving those who are homeless, vulnerable housed, lonely or needing support.

As is often the case, the charity had an existing CRM but it was no longer meeting their needs. The legacy system was causing staff and volunteers a lot of frustration, sapping their time, and all sorts of workarounds were needed to account for its inability to adapt their ever-evolving service.

Having got to know the charity first through a piece of strategic work looking at Theory of Change and a new outcomes framework we were well versed in the impact that the charity was making and the demands of its funders with respect to reporting on that impact.

At Goodlabs we always encourage an ‘impact-first’ approach. This ensures data management is constructed around measuring the things that matter most. Upskilling staff is key to this too, because however well designed the CRM may be ultimately the reports and dashboards it presents are only as good as the data going in. Patiently overcoming system-adoption anxieties is key, including when necessary going at the pace of users who need additional hand-holding.

Feedback from the charity has been really encouraging. It’s great to know that we’ve been able to deliver on our promise to “make impact easier”.

If you’d like a demo of Cimpl drop a line to: cimpl@goodlabs.uk

Pic by Jonny Gios, Unsplash

Children's Community Strategy

Every once in a while we’re approached by an organisation that, pressed by circumstances beyond their control, requires a piece of work done really quickly. This was the case when we were recently asked to support Wallsend Children’s Community, an initiative of Save the Children UK, to write a new strategy.

Supporting charities to create strategic plans is core business here at Goodlabs, using a tried and tested ‘impact-first’ approach. Engaging stakeholder groups, holding away days and co-creating ambition statements, objectives and goals are all part of the process. What made this assignment different, and challenging, was fast-tracking the process to take place over a six-week period.

Fortunately, on this occasion we had the ability to make room in our schedule, and the client was impressively flexible too. A good deal of prep work had been done which we were able to quickly consolidate in order to gather pace and hit initial milestones. As the project progressed a real sense of momentum developed that led to some great ideas emerging as a result of synergies that might not have been achieved had we not been so against the clock.

The final draft of the strategy, which centred around 4 headline objectives linked to 11 organisational goals was ultimately signed off bang on time.

If you’d like to explore how we might help you with a new strategic plan drop a line to: strategy@goodlabs.uk

North East Youth Alliance

Visualising the interconnected elements of the initiative

Goodlabs were appointed as external evaluators and learning partners to the North East Youth Alliance back in early 2022. We are just embarking on the third of our reports into the the progress being made by the initiative against its ambitious aims and objectives.

Whilst we operate across many different branches of the voluntary sector work with children and young people is a key area of strength and expertise within our overall portfolio of work. This reflects the experience of our MD, Matt Wilson, who spent the first two decades of his career involved in leading charities focused in this area. So it’s always exciting to be contributing to the development of new capacity and learning in this sector.

The North East Youth Alliance formed in 2021 with a 5-year £1 million funding award from the National Lottery Community Fund. Its overarching aims are visualised in the graphic above which shows how a change in culture is achieved by work undertaken in developing delivery and strengthening support. The project is being jointly led by two core partners, Youth Focus NE and NE Youth. Over 100 other organisations from around the region are involved as ‘allies’.

Our work over the next six months will involve pursuing several interconnected lines of enquiry gathering evidence of the impact being made in each of the three core themes shown in the model above. One of the advantages of journeying with a client over a period of years is the ability to develop a real depth of insight into what’s going on. A relationship of support and challenge can be developed with the key leaders and there is genuine opportunity to be a critical friend in the best possible sense of the phrase.

As we embark on this next chapter of the evaluation we’re looking forward to what the next few months will bring. Despite continued financial challenges for the youth sector across the UK there’s a very real sense that through the North East Youth Alliance new pathways are being created that show the way to a brighter and more sustainable future.

The Impact Pyramid

Organisations setting out to manage their impact more effectively need to do so using a coherent approach that brings together the different moving parts. Through dozens of impact management projects over the last 5 years we’ve developed a simple model - the Impact Pyramid.

The first thing to do is to build a solid base. We label this monitoring. It is about taking care of the fundamentals, also known as your outputs. It is absolutely essential to be able to record and retrieve information about who, where and how much? This is also where you differentiate participation by personal characteristics such as age cohort, gender identity, ethnicity etc. Good quality monitoring is really important for accountability, KPI’s associated with service level agreements, and assessing the ebbs and flows of demand over time. However, monitoring does not tell you whether your work has been effective. For that you need the next layer of the pyramid.

Next we have evaluation. Here, the focus shifts to your outcomes. In what aspects of their life is a difference being made for your beneficiaries? And what is the extent of that change, is it a little or a lot? We support many of our clients to develop comprehensive outcomes frameworks that explain clearly what outcomes are generated and what specific indicators will reveal progress being made towards securing these outcomes. To complete the framework we’ll look at what evidence collection tools (such as questionnaires and surveys) are needed to capture the relevant data at key intervals.

Finally, the tip of the pyramid: learning. Ultimately managing impact requires having accurate data that produces insight into What Works. By taking time to look carefully at patterns emerging from monitoring and evaluation reports we can identify valuable results and good practice that we can celebrate and share, as well as revealing what may need to become a focus for future improvement.

If you’re keen to enhance your organisation’s impact and require support we’d love to help. Our consultancy packages are very affordable, as is our bespoke CRM system - CIMPL.