‘Making housing shine’:

Thoughts on ‘impact’ in the social housing

sector gleaned from the charity world

Dan Corry, CEO, NPC

Chartered Institute of Housing Conference, 2012

June 2012

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About NPC: helping transform the social sector

• We help charities and funders achieve greater impact through research, consultancy, and communications

• Part think tank, part consultancy we focus on:

• Think tank work on issues that affect effectiveness in the sector like

Commissioning

Social investment

Local civil society

Charity

effectiveness

• Strategic planning

• Improving your organisation

• Reporting your impact

• Social investment

Measurement

& evaluation

• Advice on strategy and

funding processes

• Programme design

• Reviews

Funder

effectiveness

• Measurement frameworks

• Independent evaluation and

economic analysis

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The purpose of charities

• Mission and passion crucial

• To the people who give to them

• And the people who do the work

• Impact is the real purpose though

• Not always easy or clear why this matters

• NPC’s recent A journey to greater impact publication

discusses much of this with a number of case studies

Why do we care about impact?

• Impact is all about whether an organisation is achieving what it

hopes to

• Crucial if we are to use resources effectively—and cost

effectively too

• Vital to let us be able to learn and so improve

• Charities often hope it will impress funders too

• And need to know if want to get involved in payment by results

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Need to be clear on outcomes

• Sounds obvious

• But in our experience, charities often poor at this

• Start with mission but get lost on the way

• But some over-claim

• Others have multiple objectives

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Theory of Change

• Story of how you achieve impact

• Or at least how you think you do

• Needs simplicity

• Accuracy

• and honesty

Theory of Change:

The beginnings of making a difference

http://www.philanthropycapital.org/publications/improving_the_sector/Theory_of_change.aspx

Add TOC from ToC paper

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Measuring what you do

• If you don’t, how can you know what you achieve?

• How can you improve? How can you learn?

• Many problematic issues

• Data

• Attribution

• Additionality

• Measuring what is measurable

• What tools to use

• But need some handle on what you do and problems are no

excuse

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Assessing impact comes at different levels

Reach

Cert

ain

ty o

f O

utc

om

e

Individual

Community &

family

Professionals & policy makers

Society

Being successful at fundraising is not enough

NSPCC is one example of an organisation that began to

realise this

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What do charities learn from this?

• Do they change? (some don’t)

• Can improve services

• Become more efficient and effective

• Even uncover their true value

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‘Before the evaluation, our hospital cafés were seen as revenue

raisers. Now they are seen as fundamental to the service we

deliver—an opportunity to engage with millions of older people at

a time of difficulty and stress.’ WRVS

Other benefits (from A journey to greater impact)

• Motivate and inspire staff

• Save staff time—the homelessness charity Edinburgh

Cyrenians found its new measurement system ‘really helpful,

and there is less paperwork’.

• Raise their profile.

• Influence the debate on ‘what works’—the Brandon Centre

piloted a new approach to working with troubled teenagers,

which led to government running trials of the therapy.

• Secure funding—Pathway, a homeless healthcare charity, has

secured nearly £1m of funding in 2010/2011, which they say is

‘clear evidence of the benefits of evaluation’.

• Prepare for social investment

Changes in the sector

• Focusing on outcomes means:

• Do differently

• Work differently

• Work with others

• Merge?

Do Social Housing Providers do any of this?

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What are social housing providers trying to

achieve?

• How do they know if they are good?

• And/or getting better?

• Is there shared measurement?

• What about soft outcomes?

• Do eg LAs, HAs, ALMOs and for-profit providers have different

outcomes and objectives in mind?

• Do they want to be (and should the be) explicit on this?

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Some choices and decisions

• Is it just basic housing services?

• Split between new housing and housing services

• Mixed communities

• 80% affordable rents brings lots of this to the fore

• What about social outcomes?

• And community issues—social capital etc

• How ‘local’ are many social housing providers today?

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Do differences from ‘normal’ charities matter? (1)

• Revenue stream (rent)

• Customers

• Asset base

• Lots of borrowing

• Does this keep them all to order?

• (Or is accountability so defuse that less pressure on than for

most charities?)

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Do differences from ‘normal’ charities matter? (2)

• On going relationship with families and individuals

• Location tied down!

• Sanctions available

• Regulated

• (Although end of TSA)

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Some differences but does not alter

need to assess impact

NPC experience on non-housing issues

• Housing Associations and Registered providers often very

good at social issues

• Eg Domestic violence

• Know the families, have on-going responsibility to all tenants

• But sometimes too close to statutory side for complex issues

• On community and social capital issues, going to be even more

important: individual charities and agencies cannot do it on

their own

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How housing associations measure non-housing

(“community investment”) impact at present

From Recent HACT/TSRC report (survey of 34)

• Organisations struggle to develop appropriate outcome

measures

• Main drivers were linked to accountability ( to board, residents

and external funders).. and a desire to ensure that projects

were being delivered effectively

• Analytical skills are a weakness

• 35% use externally developed tools, 41% tools which have

been develop internally. The latter exhibit generally lower

satisfaction ratings

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So in the housing space…

• Work out what you are doing

• Set it out and measure it

• Feed the results back into your strategy, methods and

organisation

• Get your trustees engaged

• Pull out of areas you are not doing well

• Get some shared measurement and metrics going

• Partner with others when they do it better

• …We are around to help!

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A final thought

With needs up and the

state pulling back we all

need to work smarter to

meet social needs

Dan Corry Chief executive

DCorry@philanthropycapital.org

www.philanthropycapital.org