13/04/11

By Andrew Holt

New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) has revealed the results of its first shared measurement pilot in its report is Improving Prisoners’ Family Ties looking at the impact of charities work with prisoners and their families.

But the messages are broader as the issue is really one of charities still finding measurement difficult, particularly in certain sectors like the criminal justice system where data collection is an issue.

The key points show:

NPC believes shared measurement is a useful way of measuring impact partic amongst charities working in the same sector. Charities are still struggling to measure their impact. NPC decided to trial shared measurement in one of the sectors that struggles to prove impact because of results being intangible, lack of government data and lack of money and tools for evaluation.

NPC worked with an advisory group of experts in the field and six charities: Action for Prisoners’ Families, Kids VIP, pact, POPS, Safe Ground and Storybook Dads.

It soon became clear that there were two priority areas for the new measurement tools– looking at the experience of prison visitors and the strength of prisoners’ family relationships. With the help of the charities, we developed and piloted two questionnaires.

The results, says NPC, were interesting and provided useful date for the charities.

The visitor experience questionnaire showed that although visiting prison can be a stressful experience, the visitors’ centre can help to alleviate this stress.

The family relationship questionnaire showed that a programme using drama and group work significantly improved the relationship from the perspective of the prisoners’ family members.

Bringing six organisations together inevitably brings challenges.

Commissioning means there were situations where sharing information was difficult because the charities were effectively in competition.

Co-ordinating six different charities was also challenging but the benefits of the approach outweighed the challenges.

Government needs to be clearer about the outcomes it wants charities to demonstrate and improve access to data, says the report.

Funders, including government, grant-making trusts and philanthropists need to be considerate about what they ask charities for and pay for high-quality monitoring.

Charities need to do more to measure their work, share their experience and promote the importance of measurement to funders.

The shared measurement approach is very valuable as it combines the experience and expertise of a variety of organisations which can help tackle the challenges of measurement in the sector.

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