The Inquiry
How to create ways of evaluating work that takes into account people’s stories and experiences, and shift the focus from the process of measuring, to the learning it gives through the following:
- Shifting evaluation from being about accountability and chasing targets to listening
and learning.
- Finding ways of understanding what real change is taking place and how.
- Aligning approaches such as Storytelling, with the kind of measures that commissioners
and funders are able to process.
Learnings
COMMITTING TO A BETTER WAY OF DOING THINGS
- Create a set of commitments to make the whole process of experimentation manageable at scale in terms of getting feedback on the success of projects. I.e. redesigning a form or trying more of the storytelling approach and running more learning sessions.
- Give more context of feedback to grantmaking bodies, being sure to ask key decision makers what sort of things they might be comfortable with being exposed to as part of that decision-making process. This will help them to be fully on board with the process.
ONGOING DIALOGUE & SMALL, CONTINUOUS ACTIONS
- Continue the discussions that started at Marmalade Week, to keep the dialogue going throughout the year through regular engagement such as events, check-ins and forums centred on continuous shared learning and encouragement.
- Pull learnings together into recurring reports, using storytelling to share areas of struggle within the work, and put them forward to funders.
- Pool together people working in the same areas to support one another in continuing the work. Additionally, bring people from different areas of work together into conversations, so there can be a deeper understanding of the wider systems at hand and what’s needed for all work cohesively for the benefit of the community.
- Commit to at least one small, definitive action to do throughout the year with a view to revisiting it at an agreed date, to review how much progress has been made from it.
MAKING SENSE OF LARGE NUMBERS OF STORIES
- Make sense of large amounts of stories in a way that can still get you and others excited.
- Engage communities in making sense of stories themselves so that it's not just others extracting information and drawing out their own conclusions. Essentially, engaging people in that process of identifying their own stories and those of people in similar positions to them.
- Use creativity in feedback and evaluation, to make it feel less about boxes and statistics, and more about genuine support, transformation and community.
FROM ROADBLOCKS TO RESOURCES
- Take things that tend to be stumbling blocks, using them to make resources and roadmaps for organisations to learn how to overcome them. I.e. Grassroots organisations that don’t have much time, money or resource might have days for them to collaborate with larger organisations and discuss solutions, to be made into resources that can be applied to all grassroots operations.
MULTIPLE FEEDBACK METHODS FOR SERVICE USERS
- Implement a wider range of accessible visual and audio methods for people to feedback, so rather than just the written word, can perhaps also include peer learning, peer story collecting, interviewing and so on.
EVALUATION PLANNING & THEORY OF CHANGE
- Co-produce the project and the evaluation with both the beneficiaries and funders, enab
- Make sure that the evaluation is planned at the same time as the project, with both beneficiaries and funders involved, enabling each party to benefit from each stage of the process.
- Enable evaluation to be ongoing from beginning to end, considering what your organization does and why it's doing it throughout.
- Implement ‘The Theory of Change’ within the process. Essentially, look at the desired change wanted, and incorporate interventions within the process of evaluation. I.e. If trying to help people out of social isolation, giving them a social activity as a means of sharing their experience - such as peer feedback group - whilst enabling organisations to carry out their evaluation.
ORGANISATIONAL PASSION
Finding and igniting passion within your organisation is very important. So that, regardless of funding, turnover and other challenges, there can be a sustained, human-focused intention that goes beyond the pressure to hit targets and KPIs, and follow restrictive evaluation models. But instead, allows for individuals to have the room to focus on genuinely helping people and making a positive difference in all areas of their work.
Want to be part of the conversations around Meaningful Measurement? Get in touch.
