1. Impact measurement and social
value
Peter Bailey, Big Lottery Fund
Impact Conference, Exeter, 13th June

2. What is impact?
Any effects arising from an
intervention. This
includes immediate Impact
short-term outcomes as
well as broader and Outcomes
longer–term effects.
These can be positive or
negative, planned or
unforeseen.

3. Why measure impact?
• To increase impact (efficiency, effectiveness)
• For accountability to funders,
commissioners, sponsors, supporters, users
• For organisational learning – to enable
improvement
• For ‘proof’, evidence-building, winning new
funding or resources, promotion

4. Why now?
• Scarcity of (funding) resources
• Competition for public sector
contracts
• Pressure to benchmark, compare,
compete, prove
• New demands of social investors
• Technological advances

5. The BIG perspective
• Culture of evaluation, review and learning
• <10% may be spent on monitoring,
evaluation, learning in grant budgets
• Support contracts, signposting, advice,
guidance

6. BIG things
• Building Capabilities: up to 3% of grant to
be spent on developing organisational
capacity, such as support for
demonstrating impact.
• Learning for Impact: up to £50k to groups
of organisations to support collaborative
learning. Launch in Summer 2013.

7. Other things
• Inspiring Impact: aims to help voluntary
sector organisations across the UK get
better at measuring the impact of their
work www.philanthropycapital.org
• The Alliance for Useful Evidence:
champions the use of evidence in policy
and practice www.nesta.org.uk

8. Contact
Peter Bailey
Senior Policy & Learning Manager (Research)
Big Lottery Fund
peter.bailey@biglotteryfund.org.uk
020 7211 1778