Impact round-up: May 2021

Develop your impact and evaluation skills

Investing in skills is key for both professional and personal growth. Whether that’s focusing on growing the necessary skills to stand out in the candidate pool for an open job or learning something entirely new to prepare for a different role, industry or personal hobby.

Here’s our list of ideas to grow your impact and evaluation skills.

• Enhance your monitoring and evaluation career this year by a monitoring, evaluation and learning expert Ann-Murray Brown.
• Apply to become Inspiring Impact’s impact champion to empower others to develop their impact practice.
• Learn about the four key principles of Indigenous research ethics with Helen Kara.
• Volunteer with the European Evaluation Society (EES) Emerging Evaluators Group (yEES!) to bring the ideas and perspectives of emerging evaluators into the work of the EES and its partners.
• Attend NCVO’s impact training to learn how to build a theory of change or learn how to create your next strategy.

New guide to effective case studies

Case studies can be a helpful way to communicate insights to others, including funders and communities you work with. They can be particularly effective in highlighting aspects of implementation and outcomes in real-life settings.

What Works Centre for Wellbeing has developed a new guide to effective case studies and a case study template. This will help you bring together what you’ve learned about a project or activity in a structured, clear and thorough way.

Inspiring Impact also explains benefits and limitations of case studies and how to develop case studies for understanding your impact. Find out more about how to write a case study on our Knowhow website

Exploring covid-19’s impact on our sector

Take part in the largest UK study exploring covid-19’s impact on our sector. Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with NCVO and Sheffield Hallam University (funded by the ESRC), is currently conducting the largest UK study exploring the impact of covid-19 on the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector.

The latest ‘Respond, recover, reset’ monthly report looks at the critical relationship between voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations and local authorities. Local authorities can be a key partner in delivering services, a source of finance or provider of critical infrastructure such as community centres.

The impact of charities and volunteering in tackling inequalities

The government is developing a plan for how it intends to ‘level up’ the country, with almost £5bn committed to improving everyday life across the UK. NCVO thinks charities and volunteers can play an essential role in this.

We want to hear your thoughts to help us demonstrate the impact charities and volunteers can make to tackle social and economic inequality. Please fill in this form and share your practical ideas and solutions that can tackle social and economic inequality, based on:

• your experience running charities
• working with volunteers and supporting communities.

The deadline to complete the form is midday on 24 May.

Celebrate the impact made by volunteers

Volunteers’ Week is an annual event, coordinated by NCVO, which takes place on 1-7 June. It’s about recognising and celebrating the contribution made by volunteers nationwide.

To learn more information about the campaign, you can watch our webinar from Volunteer’s week 2019 to help you and your organisation prepare for the week.

Training and events

Registration is now open for the UK Evaluation Society Annual Conference taking place 25 – 27 May. The theme for this year’s virtual conference is Evaluation and evaluative thinking: Insights for methods, capabilities, culture, and implementation.

We continue to run accessible and affordable online courses, focusing on key topics including funding, governance, strategy and volunteering. We’ll make sure your learning needs are met through interactive, live sessions with knowledgeable trainers – with discounts for NCVO members (Not a member? Find out more about NCVO membership).

Here’s what’s coming up soon.

• Creating a theory of change for your charity – 26 May and 8 June
• Funding strategy and diversification in the current climate – 27 May and 27 July
• Writing successful bids – 5 May and 25 June
• How to create your next strategy – 1 July

We can also come to you! Our courses can be delivered virtually online, providing an affordable way to train groups of staff, trustees or volunteers. For more information, contact our team.

And finally…

Have a play on this interactive world cloud to find out if your password has made it to the data visualisation on most common passwords. This is created by Information is Beautiful.