- Our Impact
- / Chapter 5
What we measure and why
We measure our impact at three levels:
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1
On charities and social enterprises
Looking at how our work with our partners enables charities and social enterprises to have more impact in their communities.
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2
On our social investment partners
Looking at how our work, and that of our partners, builds resilience by strengthening the organisations that provide finance to charities and social enterprises.
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3
On the wider financial system
Looking at how we can accelerate change by bringing people together to strengthen existing approaches and share new ones.
Measuring our impact
Our work aims to enable charities and social enterprises to have more impact in their communities, but we don’t measure this directly. Tracking this would be very burdensome for VCSEs, difficult to aggregate, and hard to attribute.
Our role is to ensure the flow of finance. Our social investor partners’ role is to find and invest in impactful organisations, and we trust them to do that.
We believe a thriving social investment ecosystem serving all parts of the country and communities will strengthen charities and social enterprises, helping them become more resilient and impactful.
This impact report provides a snapshot of our achievements with partners up to 2024 and will be updated annually to reflect the changes in reach and impact.
Our KPIs
While much of our work is multi-year and complex, and not easily measured annually, we’ve developed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help us understand our progress.
These were agreed in early 2024 and build on our approach to solving the problems outlined in chapter four and our Theory of Change.
We see our KPIs are an opportunity for continuous improvement and learning, which is why we have set ambitious targets that we might not always achieve. You’ll see that this means that the majority of our KPIs are still amber, which means we are partly but not fully achieving them, and we will continue working towards achieving them, and making the targets more ambitious if needed.
Future reports will update our progress against these KPIs.
| Theme | KPI | 2024 RAG | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flow of money | 1 | More investment flows to charities and social enterprises who would not otherwise be able to access appropriate finance | Green |
| 2 | Proportionally more of our money is flowing to underserved communities and to organisations led by protected groups | Amber | |
| Resilience of the system | 3 | Organisations who have been supported through our programmes/funding are more financially resilient than they were before / would otherwise be | Amber |
| 4 | The social investors we work with are more resilient | Amber | |
| The social investors we work with are more resilient | 5 | More public, private and philanthropic organisations are engaging with and funding charities and social enterprises through blended finance, enterprise grant making and responsible investment. | Amber |
How we are doing so far
The insights in this report come from our programme evaluations, quarterly monitoring and other discrete research projects.
Click through to explore our impact and reach at these three levels, and hear more from the partners we work with, and the charities and social enterprises we support.
- Our impact on charities and social enterprises
- Our impact on our social investment partners
- Our impact on the wider financial system