Impact and evaluation are more important than ever. With changes to funding and the civil society landscape, NGOs are having to adapt and show how their projects are successful in communities. Impact is more than counting how many people have engaged in a project. It is about the quality of those interactions and what sustainable changes have been achieved by a group. As a result of this, we are having to navigate impact and evaluation more in our day-to-day work, so that we can collect the data we need and tell the stories of our projects.
All organisations need to be measuring impact and implementing evaluation in some capacity. It does not matter if it is a small organisation engaging a handful of people per year, or a massive NGO interacting with thousands of volunteers and beneficiaries. It is important, now more than ever, that we showcase the work we do and shout about the amazing work we do in our communities.
In the context of the VOSOTROS Erasmus+ Key Action 2 project, of which Volonteurope is a member, we are delighted to bring in the expertise and enthusiasm of our UK member organisation, Volunteering Matters, to help NGOs across Europe and globally to learn about the importance of evaluation and impact measurement. On Thursday 15 April 2021, at 13:00 CET, you will have a chance to meet George Burgess (he/him), Impact and Evaluation Officer at Volunteering Matters, who will set the case for why it is important for civil society organisations to engage in serious impact measurement and evaluation of their amazing work in communities.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that we had to not only change the way we run projects, but also the way we evaluate and showcase impact,” says George. “One initiative we did at volunteering Matters were ‘Change Stories’. These were more than case studies; they were snapshot overviews of a project’s mechanics, intended outcomes and impact achieved in a local area or across projects. These stories gave a narrative to what volunteers were doing to support communities and how invaluable we are to the individuals we support. We ended up pulling them all together to make a ‘COVID-19 Impact Report’. This is one thing we did to continue our evaluation work, which ended up becoming a useful resource for stakeholders, external communications, and morale.”
The webinar is open to the first 100 registered participants – book your place here.