New Client: Love Withington Baths

/in , /by

The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, Love Withington Baths.

The Evaluator is working with the community leisure centre to carry out a Social Return On Investment (SROI). You can read our blog post all about SROI here, but it’s basically a formal process of identifying what matters to people taking part, starting with the changes they identify. We are looking forward to chatting away to people using the centre, and figuring out what changes it has led to in people’s lives. It’s a really well used centre, so we should get to talk to lots of people!

You can see more about Withington Baths here. 

New client: The Bureau for the Arts, Blackburn

/in , /by

The Evaluator is delighted to be starting a new evaluation; Chip In. Isn’t that a great name? Northern, does what it says, and everyone loves chips!

Helping people, building community, changing lives!

Chip In is a place- based project which aims to engage and mentor young people aged 16-30 in volunteer opportunities across Blackburn with Darwen’s arts, culture, sport, heritage and environment sectors over the next two years. The Project aims to break down barriers which young people face in volunteering, bring together opportunities and build skills, confidence and community.

The Bureau Centre for the Arts is among over 160 organisations across arts, culture, sport, civil society, youth, and heritage sectors to benefit from the £4.6 million Volunteering Futures Fund.

Chip In (formerly Volunteering Now) is our two year volunteer partnership programme for young people aged 16-30. We have teamed up with a range of local partners in the borough to provide opportunities for volunteering in a range of areas such as events, music, project development, admin, exhibition invigilation, workshop support, stewarding, curation, collection handling, supporting youth sessions, social media and blogging, food growing and much more!

You can see more about the project here or read more about Volunteering Futures here. 

Successful Client: The £1.6 million Climate FORTH project gets the go ahead

/in , /by
Earlier this year, The Evaluator worked with Climate FORTH (Furthering Our Resilience Through Heritage) on their application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, where we developed an evaluation framework for the whole project. They have just announced they were successful. That’s always a lovely day, sharing in the success of our clients.
The details are below:
A new £1.6million project in the Inner Forth has been granted just over £1million by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to boost the area’s climate resilience through the promotion and enhancement of local heritage.
image.png
Climate FORTH is the latest project from Inner Forth Futures, a landscape-scale partnership which has been operating across the coastal areas of Clackmannanshire, Stirling, Falkirk and Fife since 2012. Since the partnership’s inception, it has delivered both the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative (IFLI) and Wanderings and Windings projects, enhancing and celebrating the local area’s heritage while improving access through a series of waymarked walking and cycling trails.

The new Climate FORTH project will build on these successes by piloting methods of increasing resilience to climate and other changes in the local area’s natural and built heritage, and in its most at-risk communities.

The River Forth at Kinneil Lagoons_Falkirk_Chloe Wells_RSPB.jpg
The project will soon begin work on the delivery of several new initiatives, including green skill training for young people and community groups, enhancement of sustainable travel options around the local area, and capital works at four locations across the project area. The works will improve the climate resilience of greenspaces at Glendevon Drive in Stirling and Rannoch Park in Falkirk, as well as an important community building, Cochrane Hall in Alva, Clackmannanshire and the Gardener’s Cottage ruin at Valleyfield Estate in Fife.
One of the first activities to get underway will be a rebranding of sections of the National Cycle Network which pass through the Inner Forth. Supported by Sustrans, this work will encourage more people to make use of the network and help establish the landscape as a destination for sustainable tourism.
A key aim of Climate FORTH is to pilot new techniques that can be shared with other initiatives and policymakers to inspire further action. The pioneering work of the project will be closely monitored so the knowledge obtained can support Scotland’s aim of achieving net zero emissions by 2045 and help communities move towards a just transition.
Four communities in particular have been identified as being key to the project’s goals, with members playing an active role in decisions involving their local area through the co-design of local resilience plans. They are Hawkhill in Clackmannanshire, Fallin in Stirling, Bainsford & Langlees in Falkirk and Kincardine in Fife.
Climate FORTH Project Manager, Kate Fuller, said, “We’re delighted to have been awarded this Heritage Fund support that will allow us to show how the diverse natural and cultural assets of the Inner Forth can be adapted to tackle the threats of climate change. We’ve seen through our previous work just how special this part of Scotland is. Thanks to National Lottery players, Climate FORTH will enable us to re-invigorate our work with the amazing communities that live here and support them to lead by example as Scotland moves towards achieving net-zero.”
Dave Beaumont, Operations Director for RSPB Scotland said, “We are in a nature and climate emergency and the only way we can meet this challenge is by facing it together. Estuaries such as the Forth are where we are seeing impacts from climate change right now – as sea levels rise, storm intensities increase and rivers flowing into our seas are carrying floodwaters much more frequently. The communities and the incredible wildlife found in and around our estuaries are more fragile than ever and this project will continue our efforts to make them more resilient to the changes ahead.”
Cosmo Blake, Network Engagement Manager for Sustrans Scotland, said, “We are delighted to work with Inner Forth Futures to create a new brand identity and better signage along sections of The National Cycle Network. As well as creating a new brand identity, we are also developing eight new day trips with maps, directional signage and additional bike parking and maintenance stations at local heritage sites and transport hubs. We hope this will encourage more people to walk, wheel and cycle and make sustainable choices when visiting the Inner Forth.”
Heather Macnaughton, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Historic Environment Scotland said, “This funding will build on the exciting work our partnership has already undertaken in the area to help protect this heritage rich estuary from the impact of climate change. Working with the local community, Climate FORTH will shine a light on the area’s natural and built heritage and the important part it can play in improving climate resilience and biodiversity. By working closely with our partners and communities, Historic Environment Scotland looks forward to developing solutions for future resilience and moving together towards a just transition.”
Caroline Clark, Director for Scotland, The National Lottery Heritage Fund said, “This is such an important project for our times – Climate FORTH will enable communities to take the lead in developing their own local responses to the challenges of climate change and Net Zero. What makes this project even more significant is that it will then create templates that can be adapted for use by other communities across Scotland and beyond.”
Inner Forth Futures is a partnership between RSPB Scotland, Clackmannanshire Council, Falkirk Council, Fife Council, Green Action Trust, Historic Environment Scotland, NatureScot, Stirling Council and Sustrans. Climate FORTH is partly funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with additional funding from the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund, the Crown Estate, IFF members and the Scottish Government through Sustrans Scotland’s Network Engagement Programme. The project will be running from August 2023 – July 2026.
For more information, visit innerforthlandscape.co.uk.

Learning about data; Working with qualitative data

/in /by

From time to time, we share a director’s blog post, where we share some learning about how to use your data (information) better. This is a post all about how to use qualitative data, that’s the information that is made up of words rather than numbers.

The chances are that your organisation already has a bank of this data but it may not be well organised and easily accessible. Below is a list of some of the many ways you might have collected qualitative data, possibly without realising it.

How credible is your qualitative data?

There is a distinction between primary and secondary data and it’s important to understand what you have collected as the credibility differs between the two.  Primary data is more credible and robust.  It is the data that people told you or have written themselves.  Secondary data is that which is overheard in discussion or something that someone has heard and told you about.

To check the credibility of your secondary data, you can apply the Rule of 3. If you’ve heard it from 3 different places or if it’s come from 3 different people independently then it can be considered as credible and representative of a thought or opinion.

How to make the qualitative data more usable? 

We use word or phrase frequency analysis to evaluate our qualitative data to look for patterns of frequency of words to identify common themes.  This can be done online using free tools, like this one,  and they just count the words for you.  We often use the top 10 words or phrases.  You can also use the ratio of positive to negative words that are used or how far down the feedback the first negative word appears.  Using these methods helps to quantify data and make it more digestible and can be used in marketing or to track changes over time.

Mind maps can be useful to illustrate and develop on the themes identified. You can just draw these freehand to have a look at what the main themes are.

Word clouds provide a visual representation at a glance of the qualitative data and this is also a resource that can be sourced freely online.  The most common words appear the biggest in the cloud, making this data easier for the reader to understand visually.

Top tip – try to be objective, it can be hard to hear negative comments but it is how we improve and know what to fix, and they’re often in the minority compared to positive comments.

How to use and share qualitative data?

This data can be used in many different ways:

We also use qualitative data to create case studies which illustrate people’s journeys and direct engagement.  Case studies can be shared at board level and to show case your project’s work for marketing purposes.  Case studies appeal to a wide audience and are particularly useful in attracting funders as voices are recorded and reflected in these studies.

In our experience as evaluators, a case study from a project that we evaluated got shared with funders (Green Recovery) who sent it on to The National Lottery Heritage Fund who then sent it on to the Department of Work and Pensions.  Case studies are impactful in that they record real voices and can attract publicity and raise awareness of change.

 

If all of this sounds like too much work and you don’t have time, get in touch. We are happy to have a chat about your individual requirements and to see how we could help.

Social Return on Investment; What is it? And do I want it?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Social Return on Investment (SROI) has been around for quite a while, but it’s still not that well understood. Our director, Kirsty Rose Parker, completed the training back in 2010 and has used it on many occasions.

Carrying out a SROI is a robust framework for writing and describing a wider context of value. It puts a financial proxy on to a  project. It is presented in monetary terms but describes value, not actual money. Because SROI is robust and has a structured methodology, it does have some key principles.

  • Change is change and might not always be positive; there may be some negative implications
  • Stakeholders are key to the whole process; an SROI should start with stakeholders
  • SROI uses financial proxies to value change. Throughout this SROI, existing measures of other similar experiences that could also make the changes our participants told us about have been used as financial proxies.
  • It can’t include everything – not everything that changes in people’s lives is down to the project. It is just as important to know when to stop.
  • An SROI should be truthful. It goes without saying really, but on an exercise like this honesty is the best policy. For an SROI to be believable it does need to be based on evidence and data, and not over-claimed.
  • An SROI should be transparent; explaining the process to give transparency to all the decisions made.
  • Results should be verified, either by stakeholders or experts or both

Some funders do recommend ‘Social Return on Investment’ and all respond positively to it. It is a good methodology and we often follow points 1 and 2 in other evaluations, as we like the structure of reminding us to keep an open mind and see what people tell us.

It works best on projects which make big changes to peoples lives; whether that is changes to mental health or overall health, if people get jobs, or are supported to get housing, for those living with dementia or addiction although the process can be adapted to almost all projects or even an organisation as a whole.

It works best on projects which have a clear start point which can be measured, and ideally would look at value over time. If everyone started a project on the same day, it would need to allow a few months for changes to take place. If a programme allows people to join at any time it can be quicker, as then a team of evaluators would be able to talk to people who had just joined and those who had been taking part for a while in the same month.

It is a process of reflection, and evaluation. It will help teams to think about the changes they enable and to see what their impact is. It can help to build pride in a project or organisation. It can definitely increase investment as it gives investors a clear sense of the change their investment enables.

To simplify; If your project changes lives, then yes you want a SROI. If you can get hold of people taking part then yes you can do a SROI. It does need to be done during a project, it’s not impossible to do one retrospectively but it is much harder, so do try and plan one in earlier rather than later.

Give us a call if you want to know more, we’d be happy to chat through the process. If you want to do it for yourself…

More information, including a guide to working out a SROI can be found here. 

New Project: Urban Forest Accelerator

/in , /by

The Evaluator is delighted to be starting a new project with National Trust, the Urban Forest Accelerator. We are excited to be working on measuring concepts of urban tree cover, tree equity, environmental justice and developing a new approach to measuring connections. Just as joined up canopies can be more that the sum of their parts, we believe our work relationships can also mirror this and aim to develop a new way to track this over time.

Along the way, we are lucky enough to get to work with inspirational people who want to transform and green our urban areas. We get to have discussions around who should decide what is best for urban trees, to look at tree cover metric developmental work and to use words like arboriculture career pathways and knowledge. Plus, we love trees!

The Urban Forest Accelerator is part of the Future Parks Accelerator and aims to address concepts including; partnership, urban forest capacity, sustainable finance, tree equity, community engagement and learning and scaling.

 

 

Recent Client Feedback

/in , /by

At The Evaluator, we are committed to learning and improving our work over time. To make sure we achieve this we do evaluate ourselves and ask our clients to give us feedback. Here are some recent results.

 

And let’s end on a detailed client testimonial, from when The Evaluator worked in partnership with Simon Lees from Countryside Training Partnership to create an evaluation framework.

“Kirsty from The Evaluator and Simon from Countryside Training Partnership have challenged and encouraged the Climate FORTH project team and Board to think about monitoring and evaluation in a holistic way, right from this project development stage. The Monitoring and Evaluation Framework created will support our application to NLHF for delivery phase funding and show how we wish to go beyond monitoring outputs to considering the wider impact of National Lottery and other investment through our project. Communication was excellent throughout this contract and an extension was kindly accommodated when our timelines were delayed. The final report is clear, concise and well considered – spot on – we hope that we get an opportunity to enact it! The Evaluator & Countryside Training Partnership have proposed workable and proportional monitoring and evaluation methods to follow in a project delivery phase, identified suitable baseline data and provided friendly advice as we move through our project development phase. I would be pleased to recommend both parties to other organisations and partnerships looking for a personalised professional approach to this type of work.” Kate Fuller, Climate FORTH Project Manager, Inner Forth Futures.

National Research Council Report Published

/in , /by

 

Our research report is now published.

Nature and Wellbeing in the Probation Service

Lancashire Wildlife Trust Nature and Wellbeing Service started running sessions at a Probation Service approved premises in October 2020. Running a number of activities such as landscaping, growing food and working as a team, the project ran twice a week, available to the probationers living on site.

As the project was funded through Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) this evaluation was carried out following approval from the National Research Council for HMPPS and followed all their guidelines including size of summary report.

 

Click here to see three different reports we have published with Lancashire Wildlife Trust. 

 

 

New Client: National Trust

/in /by

Blue border and text saying new client national trust

The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client: National Trust.

The National Trust is Europe’s largest conservation charity, who look after nature, beauty and history for everyone to enjoy. They do it with the help of millions of members, volunteers, staff and donors. Without that, they couldn’t care for the miles of coastline, woodlands, countryside and the hundreds of historic buildings, gardens and precious collections they protect.

The Evaluator is delighted to be working with them to focus in on a people engagement evaluation, for their Green Recovery Challenge Funded Project ‘Uplands’. We will be getting to know the teams, carrying out analysis including an economic assessment of the supply chain for the project and sharing our learning through interactive workshops, which we are calling ‘Action Learning Sessions’.

 

Client Case Study: Surrey County Council working with The Evaluator

/in /by

This is a video interview, with Kirsty Rose Parker, founder and director of The Evaluator in conversation with Surrey County Council discussing an evaluation. Our thanks go to Daniel Murray, and Patricia Huertas from Surrey County Council for agreeing to be filmed for this case study.