Corporate Community Involvement Seminar: Creating Impact

Date of event: 17/07/09
Organised by: NCVO
Venue: NCVO, London
Report by: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer

First up to present was Mike Tuffrey, founding Director of Corporate Citizenship. Mike talked about the London Benchmarking Group (LBG), which was formed 1994 by BP, Grand Met, NatWest, IBM, Marks & Spencer and Whitbread, who needed an investment model and to demonstrate good community management. The result was “LBG model” (see page 8 of Mike’s presentation), which helps companies assess what they invest into communities and to report more effectively the impact of this investment.

This was very relevant to Target: Wellbeing, with all our projects currently grappling with the roll out of our portfolio-wide evaluation at the moment. Designed by the North West Public Health Observatory (NWPHO), it aims to evaluate the outcomes, rather than outputs and I was very pleased to see that Mike’s advice was to focus on Inputs Vs Impacts (the same as our “Outcomes”, just different jargon!) rather than just Outputs when reporting.

For the uninitiated a quick description of the difference might be useful:
INPUTS are the resources put into your project to make it happen. These could include funding, volunteer time, training, etc.
OUTPUTS are the activities or services your project delivers in order to create outcomes. These could include the number of sessions delivered, attendance at those sessions, etc.
OUTCOMES are the long term changes, benefits, learning, etc. that happen as a result of your project. E.g. People reporting improved levels of food preparation and cooking skills and people reporting increased self esteem.

Our evaluation planning process helps project officers identify what their inputs, outputs and outcomes are, and how they can evaluate these. As every single one of our projects will be thinking about their evaluation in these terms, whether they are using Target: Wellbeing’s evaluation tools or not, Mike’s presentation gave me confidence that they will be better equipped to approach potential corporate (and other kinds of) funders as a result of the hardwork we’re all putting into our evaluation process at the moment!

Next to the podium was Dr Richard Piper, Head of Strategy and Impact at NCVO, who had quite a different, and at times controversial, message about measuring and reporting impact. Richard suggested that measuring impact should only be done when it has a purpose, and that there were negative elements to what he termed, “The Measurement Fallacy”, such as the proliferation of jargon and toolkits, and that it might well divert attention from managing the impact and communicating it.

However, I’ve seen Richard speak before at the NCVO’s/ Media Trust's marketing conference back in January, and I felt his message here was very similar to what he was saying back then – that impact reporting needs to actually communicate the things that will affect the people you want to speak to (e.g. potential funders, corporate or otherwise) in a way they will understand. I would certainly agree it’s too easy to fall into the old annual report trap of a 50 page glossy brochure, with reams of facts and figures even though we’re never sure who actually reads them. And if someone did read them would they actually be moved by what they read?

For me this doesn’t mean not using the results of impact evaluation, but communicating them in a way that really illustrates that impact, perhaps through a combination of facts and figures, photographs and testimonials, and in a format that is engaging for it's planned recipient. But more than this, Richard pointed out that we shouldn’t just report on the main, strategic outcomes, that all the positive things that happen on the periphery (like participants making friends at a class, or just a general feeling of wellbeing during the session) was worth reporting too. Richard calls this the “Full Value”, and you can read more about it on page 8 of his presentation.

His overarching point is summarised in the introduction to Performance Hub’s publication, “True Colours”, which he co-wrote with Jake Eliot:

“The future success of every third sector organisation depends partly on whether or not it can persuade other people that it is valuable and worthy of their attention and support. If you can get these people – volunteers and donors, trustees and employees, partners and funders, and the audiences of lobbying and campaigning – contributing positively to you organisation, its future will be bright. But many third sector organisations don’t communicate their value strongly enough, or tell others about their successes. As a result many organisations are misunderstood and under-appreciated.”

With Target: Wellbeing’s first evaluation report from the NWPHO due in October, this gave me lots of food for thought about how best to present the information in the most accessible and digestible way to our various stakeholders. So I’ve been devouring “True Colours”, and making lots of plans, none of which involve producing a chunky, glossy tome of an annual report!

You can read more about the session and view the presentations here.

Target: Wellbeing has a copy of “True Colours” in our library, which any Target: Wellbeing project can borrow. Just email me at rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk . Alternatively you can buy your own copy here.