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The Trust Company Strategic Partners Symposium Evaluation October 2013. Engaged Philanthropy. Engaged Philanthropy Drivers: Philanthropy Increasing focus on impact Not-for-Profit Move towards outcomes based funding and individualised client-controlled packages
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The Trust Company Strategic Partners Symposium Evaluation October 2013
Engaged Philanthropy Engaged Philanthropy Drivers: • Philanthropy • Increasing focus on impact • Not-for-Profit • Move towards outcomes based funding and individualised client-controlled packages • Convergence of ‘for profit’ and ‘for good’ • Increasing client and government expectation that service sector will act in a coordinated and integrated fashion • Increasingly competitive environment requires new skill set: market research, business development, marketing and promotion, product development, accurate costing, customer focus • Trend towards fewer but larger agencies • Increasing need for better research and evaluation base • Technology – new ways of connecting time and talent
TRAJECTORY There are 2 thresholds to cross towards collective impact PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS NFPs align strategy and activity behind a common theory of change with other organisations. Partnership model becomes a platform for other stakeholders like government, corporates, academia NFPs develop a theory of change which puts its social change objective in broader context. Link theory of change to strategy & evaluation framework and focus on longer term outcomes Theory of change threshold Traditional, transactional domain for non-profit organisations that pursue relatively isolated social impact Loosely aligned collaboration with little strategic clarity ISOLATED ACTION COLLECTIVE ACTION Partnership threshold
OUR PRACTICE MODEL Engaged Philanthropy will contain a mix of partners along this trajectory National Stroke Foundation - Australian Stroke Coalition BROAD FOCUS The Florey – Women in Science Project Theory of change threshold NARROW FOCUS ISOLATED ACTION COLLECTIVE ACTION Partnership threshold
Engaged Philanthropy Practice Model has 2 variables: • Grant making effectiveness - TOC • Grant making process • Grant making experience • Grant selection • Acquittal process • Evaluation • Partnering Effect – • Number of partnerships • Types of partnerships • $’s leveraged • Common agenda • Shared outcomes
Evaluation Evaluation - Where are we at? • Innovation Network - State of Evaluation 2012 - October 2012 • Centre for Effective Philanthropy – Room for Improvement – September 2012
Evaluation Engaged Philanthropy Evaluation Framework • What is your model/ theory of change? • What are you doing? • What change levers are you focussed on? • What outcomes are you trying to achieve? • What measures are you using or do you need to use to understand what has been achieved? • What role does collaboration currently play in your model? • How is your project sustainable beyond The Trust Company’s support?
Evaluation and Strategy “First and foremost, evaluation must be seen and positioned as a key support for strategy development and management; it should have a seat at the strategy table. Traditionally, evaluation is not viewed in this way. It is considered a separate component, usually entering after strategy has been developed or implemented. An emphasis on strategic learning fundamentally changes evaluation’s role and positioning.” Intersection of Strategy & Evaluation: Philanthropy’s Sweet Spot, Preskill
Evaluation and Strategy • What should we do? • How should we do it? • When should we do it? • What’s going on? • What should we do next? • How will we know if we made the right choices? • How well are we making progress on implementing our strategy? • How will we know if our work has made a difference?
Evaluation and Strategy “Getting critical resource decision right – allocating time, talent and dollars to activities that have the greatest impact - is what strategy is all about. Yet relatively few non-profits, even the most successful, have strategies in the most pragmatic sense of the world. They have missions that define their reasons for being. And they have programs and services that contribute towards the fulfillment of their missions. But when resource allocation decisions have to be made among these activities, all of which do some good, determining those that will do the MOST good can be a difficult , often contentious task.” Zeroing in on Impact, Colby, Stone & Carttar (2004)
Evaluation and Stategy Framework of Intended Impact and Theory of Change • “Intended impact and theory of change provide a bridge between a nonprofit’smission and its programmatic activities” • Intended impact: a statement or series of statements about what the organisation is trying to achieve and to which it will hold itself accountable for within some manageable period of time • Theory of change: explains how the organisation’s intended impact will actually happen, the cause-and-effect logic by which organisational and financial resources will be converted into the desired results.
Collective Impact Collective Impact: • Process and results are emergent rather than predetermined • Necessary resources and innovations often already exist but have not yet been recognised • Learning is continuous • Adoption happens simultaneously among different organisations Opportunity: • Multiple organisations looking for resources and innovation through the same lens • Rapid learning comes from continuous feedback loopos • Immediacy of action comes from a unified and simultaneous response among all participants • Emergence – terms us to describe events that are unpredictable which results from interactions between elements