NEWS: Helping West Norfolk Carers demonstrate their impact to funders
“West Norfolk Carers have changed my life beyond what I could ever think of. They’ve helped me become what I am today.”
- West Norfolk Carer beneficiary
West Norfolk Carers supports adult and young unpaid carers so they can keep caring for their close ones in the best conditions possible. Civil Society Consulting (CSC) met West Norfolk Carers over a decade ago and have been working with them on and off ever since.
During the pandemic, we onboarded West Norfolk Carers on our incubator-style programme for organisations led by and for marginalised communities, Steps to Sustainability (S2S) We worked co-productively with West Norfolk Carers to demonstrate the organisation’s impressive impact to secure more funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.
Two years on, West Norfolk Carers were keen to evaluate the impact of their work made possible by this funding and commissioned CSC who were able to draw on their long history working with carer support organisations and recent experience developing a Social Return on Investment Calculator with and for carers services across the UK.
To evaluate West Norfolk’s impact, CSC surveyed about 30 carers accessing West Norfolk Carers support to assess how effectively West Norfolk Carers were:
Improving carers’ physical and emotional well-being;
Alleviating carers’ isolation and feelings of loneliness, and;
Supporting carers to improveemployability and planning for the future.
The survey results were overwhelmingly positive, confirming the vast impact of West Norfolk Carers over the past two years:
92% of respondents felt less socially isolated and 88% felt happier;
84% gained new opportunities for learning and professional development;
92% of respondents expressed that they want West Norfolk Carers to continue their work and reach more carers.
Clearly, the carers in West Norfolk rely on the organisation for emotional and practical support, and would be ‘at a loss’ without them. Thanks to this impact report, West Norfolk Carers will be able to demonstrate their impact to funders compellingly to continue their much needed work.
Civil Society Consulting is a values-led non-for-profit, passionate about supporting small and medium-sized charities by providing affordable consultancy support. By choosing the team as their independent evaluators, West Norfolk Carers have benefitted from a high-quality report tailored to their organisation whilst keeping costs down. We worked collaboratively to find ways to optimise resources.
If you’d benefit from affordable consultancy support, don’t hesitate to book a call with us!
If you’re interested in low-cost solutions to impact measurement, you may also be interested to read about the Carers Trust SROI calculator, which allows carers centres like West Norfolk Carers to demonstrate their impact in a compelling way, without the costs and risks of conducting their own SROI study.
Background
Many grant-making processes are biased towards larger, established organisations. Because of these biases, small organisations like West Norfolk Carers need to go the extra mile to demonstrate impact and spend, on average, a third of their resources on grant applications, resources they should be able to spend on supporting their communities. Thanks to our experience offering free consultancy support to over a hundred minority-led organisations through Steps to Sustainability, as well as our experience working with funders to review their grant-making and due diligence processes (see our recent commissions), we understand both the frustrations of small organisations and the origin of the barriers they face.
