Measuring the impact of a
Community Anchor Organisation
The Bromley by Bow Centre
Where is this?
This is Canary Wharf
This is Bromley by Bow
This is the Olympic Stadium
This is Charles Booth
He was a social
researcher
In 1889 he created
a poverty map of
London
One of the hotspots
of deprivation was
Bromley by Bow
It still is
This is Bromley by Bow today?
» child poverty
» chronic ill-health
» chronic under-achievement in
education
» over-crowded and poor quality
housing
» high unemployment
» gang warfare and drug dealers
» debt collectors and the informal
economy
» domestic violence and racism
But this is also Bromley by Bow
And this is Bromley by Bow too
Last Wednesday
Last Friday
What does the Bromley by Bow Centre do?
» Bromley by Bow Centre
Independent charity £4m turnover, 150 staff
Operating on 23 sites 2,500 clients per week
Learning Centre – Day care Centre – Social Welfare Centre –
Arts Centre - Integrated health programmes – Legal service –
Financial Capability – Employment service
Beyond Business - incubated 41 social businesses in 7 years, 35 still
trading. Turnover in excess of £4 million and created over 250 jobs
» GP Practice
3/4 sites with over 23,000 patients and turnover in excess of £4m –
including a seven day per week 8am – 8pm walk-in service
» And Bromley by Bow Church in Community, Bow Childcare and
Poplar HARCA and FoodCycle
Why we wanted to measure our impact?
» The increasing role of the third sector in delivering
public services in deprived areas
» Policy interest and public sector investment in local
community anchor organisations as a distinctive form of
organisation
» Increase effectiveness in community anchor organisations
nationally through the application of newly created
measurement tools, including frameworks to measure
some of the “softer” added value of third sector
organisations
What we saw as the benefits of measuring our
impact?
» Institutional stock-take, institutional learning
» Revisiting Values, Vision, Mission
» Reviewing our Centre proposition, our theory of change,
importance of integration, access, long journeys
» Defining key factors that support long term change, the
outcomes that are so often overlooked
» Engaging programme teams with their wider work, defining
what is important, creating programme outcome frameworks
» Data, using organisational data to better understand our
provision
» Creating more integrated data systems
» Energising the team, on-going training and development
» Understanding what is effective and what could be improved
Challenges to measuring our impact?
Questions to consider…how we can
» Create standardised outcome indictors?
A challenge faced by charities for many years has been the lack of
standardisation among funders in their monitoring and reporting
requirements
» Create indicators that recognise?
- The intentions of community anchor organisations
- That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
- A community is not simply a collection of individuals, with individual outcomes
- People’s lives don’t have episodic, project related, beginnings and ends
» Construct frameworks that reconcile?
The ambition of community anchor organisations’ remits around
community development with the roles and influence of other
‘actors’, economic cycles and macro ebbs and flows requires careful
consideration
we’re here to remove the label “deprived” from our community
there’s a big thing about integration not co-location
there’s a thing about being the John Lewis of the social sector
there’s a whole thing about how you make public services accessible
there’s something about how leadership works
we don’t like signs and CCTV cameras
we like loitering with intent
there’s something about how leadership works
there’s a massive thing about trust; and generosity; and allowing people to
make mistakes; and valuing creativity and imagination
There’s no rocket science but a lot of common sense
We try hard to keep things simple and not tie ourselves in red tape
Supporting our community’s empowerment to transform is the
most important thing we do
“assume its possible”