This group meets four times a year and examines questions like:
- How can we learn from our work, both in terms of grants that we make and activities that we carry out directly? When can collaborating with other funders help us to become more effective?
- How do we use research to scope and develop our programmes? Are we confident that we use it well? What data sources do we use? Are they the ‘right’ ones? Do we use research during the programme or just to set it up?
- Why are so many evaluations disappointing? Do we commission research well? Do we know what we want to know?
- How do we use the knowledge generated by our grant recipients? Do their monitoring reports tell us anything useful? Can we learn from all our grants or just a few?
- How can we use knowledge to influence? How can we use our voice as funders and non-grant assets to create a bigger impact?
This group is chaired by Andrew Cooper, of The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. Group members are people who work in London Funders’ member organisations. Some have research and evaluation jobs while others are not specialists but are keen to use research and evaluation well and learn from the work they fund. Meetings include time for all to share current activity or raise questions, and for a more detailed presentation (most often by a group member) of a piece of research undertaken or planned and inviting discussion and critique. Meeting reports give a flavour of areas covered recently.
Anyone from London Funders' members and associates is welcome to attend. To sign up for regular updates and to receive detailed reports of meetings, contact Yvonne
Forthcoming meetings
Monday, 27 September, 10 am - 12 noon at London Funders
Has ICT a positive role in supporting and informing young people facing mental health issues?
Comic Relief has supported work around young people and mental health since 2005 and has a portfolio of live projects in this field totalling around £5 million at any one time. They have been funding several projects which use ICT to engage young people. It is widely held that ICT is a good means of communicating with young people generally, is relatively cheap for service users to access, and guarantees anonymity and confidentiality. Earlier this year, Comic Relief commissioned independent research into its potential impact, value and methodology, from the University of Warwick. The final report arising from this research will be completed in late September so this meeting will be a first chance to look at the findings, with Billy Dann.
Latest research from Big Lottery Fund
Steve Browning, Evaluation and Research Analyst at Big Lottery Fund, will update the group on BIG’s research projects – in particular two recently completed studies:
To book your place, email Yvonne.
Tuesday, 14 December, 10 am - 12 noon at London Funders
Details to be confirmed shortly
Recent meeting highlights
June 2010
Sioned Churchill from The City Parochial Foundation spoke about the evaluation of the female genital mutilation special initiative which CPF has been supporting. Michael Murray of the Heritage Lottery Fund presented findings on targeted research into sustainability and legacy work.
March 2010
Duncan Jones, Football Foundation, shared information on the development so far of a Programme Management/ Monitoring and Evaluation Tool for its own use and for funded groups and invited the project group's constructive criticism; he also wondered if there was any interest in sharing it. The Tool is intended to help the Foundation understand progress in meeting its own strategic objectives and those of its funding partners, and to help grant recipients manage their projects and delivery of outputs and outcomes.
Ruth Child, Greater London Authority, talked about the GLA's progress with Project Oracle and especially the development of a set of standards to be promoted for use by all working in the field of tackling and preventing serious youth violence. Download Ruth's presentation
December 2009
The group has been reviewing its aims and this meeting analysed the results of its own survey of group members and did some strategising about plans for the next year.
The group also heard a presentation from Craig Tomlinson of BBC Children in Need on thematic reviews.
September 2009
The group has a new Chair, Andrew Cooper, Programme and Policy Officer of The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. Members will soon be sent a short survey to help them take stock of their activities so far and plans for the next few meetings.
This particular meeting was focused around some work being done by Jean Ellis of Charities Evaluation Services. CES published the booklet What Difference Does Your Money Make? in 2001, and Jean is revising and updating it. The original publication was based on research carried out for the National Audit Office, and was designed to demonstrate good practice in monitoring and evaluation of funding. CES now want to make sure it is relevant to a broad spectrum of funders, including foundations, local authorities, private organisations and central government departments, and to commissioning as well as grantmaking programmes.
The group spent some time discussing suggested new principles and some new sections – “intelligent funding” and learning through the funding relationship. They worked in small groups and in plenary and gave Jean lots of feedback about what would be useful for them and the kind of experience they could contribute. Jean was delighted with the richness of discussion and the experience shared by the group and she will be inviting group members to contribute case studies for the new publication.
June 2009
The last meeting had looked at two pieces of research from New Philanthropy Capital – Camilla Nevill talked about assessing children’s well-being and how far charities’ activities had contributed to improved well-being.
Gustaf Lofgren presented results of research in some depth at how candidly funders and funded organisations communicated with each other and how their relationships over monitoring and evaluation could be made more positive.
March 09
Led by Andrew Cooper of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, the group discussed monitoring and evaluation and how these can be proportionate to the size of grants and contracts. Mia Spreadbury of the Office of the Third Sector came to talk about the principles of good practice in monitoring and evaluation that OTS has developed with a view to achieving endorsement by all government departments.
December 08
Following London Funders' October Accountability and Learning Briefing delivered by Jean Ellis, Charities Evaluation Services and Jenny Field, The City Bridge Trust. The meeting looked at reports on funders’ practice in monitoring and evaluating funded groups with contributions from Jean and from Lucy Heady on New Philanthropy Capital’s Turning the Tables research report. Discussions from the group were used to collate best practice monitoring and evaluation guidelines for funders in 2009.
September 08
Alison Pollard, Big Lottery Fund asked other funders for experience and guidance on scoping research on the outcomes of funding. Additionally Kate Hinds, King’s Fund summarised a paper presented at the Dilemmas International Research Conference on "From performance monitoring to learning management - the identity struggles of a health care funder". An abstract of this paper is available on the conference website. Download a copy of Kate's presentation.
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