I have been having discussions lately about one of our new high-volume capital funding programmes, the Community Asset Fund. We are needing to establish some measurement and evaluation / KPI reporting functionality for grantees and I am in the process of trying to do some research on what other funders expect in terms of their capital awards to grantees. Measuring social change is high on the agenda for this funding programme and realising the wider benefit of our investment is crucial.
We want to try something new! We would love to move away from our historic measurement of numbers of people attending a completed facility/refurbishment set against pre-agreed targets at the time of an award. We find it is not that useful a figure to obtain, could be questionable in terms of accuracy, tie up valuable resource chasing for overdue returns and is often something our grantees collate solely for our benefit to meet a condition of their award, rather then be meaningful to them; the classic and often hated ‘tick-box exercise’.
So here is my question…
When making capital or mixed awards, what do other funders ask for, how often and is the same asked of all grantees or is a proportionate approach used, depending on the type of organisation or value of award?