Power to Change: Evaluation of the Initial Grant Programme

Question: How can you measure the impact community businesses have on their local area?

Power to Change needed to assess the impact of £9 million allocated to support community businesses. The evidence was needed to inform how further tranches of its £150m Big Lottery endowment should be invested.

Solution: an inclusive approach empowering people to assess their achievements

Regeneris worked with Power to Change to deliver an evaluation process that built on the capacity of community organisations. Rather than looking at impact from the top-down, Regeneris spoke with each of the successful grant recipients to understand the information and the skills they had which could help track their impact. The supported community businesses were then able to access intensive support from Regeneris to develop their evaluation systems to improve processes and ultimately demonstrate their value.

Impact: capacity enhanced and intelligence created to enhance effectiveness

The programme helped social and community organisations consider their impact and develop processes for tracking their achievements. Our approach also allowed grant recipients a chance to influence how the programme has evolved. Regeneris generated valuable intelligence on the UK community business sector and our detailed mapping of all 750 organisations that applied to Power to Change and Big Lottery provides a valuable resource to help manage the grant programme.