Quality – demonstrating the difference
Maintaining the quality of services and demonstrating the difference that you make are key for every group and organisation. People often think of these in the context of reporting to a funder and improving the chances of future funding, and this is true, but it is also about so much more:
- No one has vast budgets, so we all need to ensure we are making the best use of what we have and targeting it to best effect.
- Engaging the people that use your services in helping to shape your offer, helps to keep it relevant and meeting needs, whilst making the people realise their views are valued and important.
- Great feedback and interesting case studies can be used to promote your group or organisation.
Impact Training
We run a regular session for Impact – ‘Demonstrating the Difference You Make‘ that will act as an introduction if you are new to this or a refresher for those that want to check that they have the basics covered. It can be challenging to get buy in from all volunteers, staff and stakeholders, so we look at how you encourage others and how to fit quality processes within what you do already for delivering services. Of course a benefit in attending training is that you hear from others too. We are also starting to deliver smaller more bespoke sessions around particular elements of the evaluation cycle, starting with logic modelling. Come to the regular session first and then follow up with more in-depth knowledge. Book your place on Eventbrite and check out who can attend our sessions.
Occasionally we do deliver bespoke impact training to a particular organisation, for example if they want the whole staff team and volunteers to train together. Typically this would be a 2-3 hrs session with a fee charged. If you’d like to speak to us please contact us on 0141 332 2444 or by e-mail sectordev@gcvs.org.uk.
Our impact training is delivered by Sallie Condy, GCVS Sector Development Manager. Sallie’s background is around adult learning, adult literacy and numeracy, ESOL and capacity building across many sectors and environments, so she brings this experience to the impact training with plenty of examples to share.
“This will really help me to get to grips on how to evaluate the project on an ongoing basis and from the onset.
I use it to regularly review business planning and impact of training.”
Impact Resources
If you are looking for some quick guidance on a particular element of measuring impact and demonstrating the difference your organisation makes, the following are helpful:
- Evaluation Support Scotland – a wealth of materials and examples available from their website. Their videos on outcomes are fun!
- Inspiring Impact – Examples of gathering and reporting impact during a time of crisis, as well as practical information
- How Good Is Our Third Sector Organisation – a framework from Education Scotland created for third sector organisations to assess performance and identify areas for change. The challenge questions are helpful if you do not know what to ask
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