In her role at Derbyshire Voluntary Action, Jennifer Raschbauer became very aware of the challenge many charities and community organisations face when trying to demonstrate the impact of their work. She realised that the challenge was becoming more critical as, in the face of budget cuts and growing demand for their services, statutory health and social care organisations are increasingly looking to the Third Sector for support and solutions.
Jennifer teamed up with Dr Amelia Woodward from the University of Derby and, with the aid of a VSSN Small Grant, set out to explore the use of the Five Ways to Wellbeing tool as a means of capturing key data relating to the core aspects of social impact. A focus group and shared learning activity were set up with representatives from a range of community organisations. These activities allowed Jennifer and Amelia to test their ideas with representatives from a range of Third Sector organisations.
Managing impact can consume a considerable amount of time in community organisations and charities. The adoption and application of innovative approaches, such as the Five Ways tool, to tackling this area of work can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of impact management and thereby allow the workforce to focus effort on service delivery. Jennifer’s work to explore new ways of demonstrating impact makes a significant contribution to reducing the burden of impact management.
A video of their work has been created as part of the project output. Findings were also shared at the 2024 VSVR Conference.
VSSN Small Grant 2023-24: Impact management: exploring and sharing the learning
|
