Provider: Locality

Location:

  • London

Website: http://locality.org.uk/

Contact:

Sector experience:

Areas of expertise:

Organisation overview:

Locality is the national network of ambitious and enterprising community-led organisations, working together to help neighbourhoods thrive.

Our national staff team works all around England and our head office is in London. We are a team of friendly and hard-working community-sector professionals working to support our members, community organisations and the communities they serve.

All our work aims to inspire local communities to change and improve.
• We help people to set up locally owned and led organisations
• We support organisations to exchange ideas and best practice on community asset ownership, community enterprise and social action
• We work to influence government and others at national and local level to build support and investment for the movement
• We run major national programmes to support and empower local communities
• We provide practical hands on support for community organisations to expand and grow and to measure their impact

Case study 1: Mary's Charity

Sector:

    Focus of project:

    • Programme design / theory of change facilitation
    • Developing impact plans
    • Data management & analysis
    • Building impact measurement tools

    Mary’s Charity commissioned Locality to work with them to create a theory of change across three service areas: their youth club, pre-school, playscheme and hire of their meeting spaces. This was undertaken with Mary’s staff providing insights into the added value that Mary’s provide, with a view to delving more deeply than the statutory regulations demand.

    Further to this, a ‘second tier’ theory of change for the hiring of Mary’s meeting rooms was devised, using data from user surveys and some primary research interviews with a sample of clients.

    Finally, a range of outcomes across all four of these functions were mapped against the Manchester New Economy Model Unit Cost database to estimate a financial return on both the publicly funded and non-publicly funded areas of work. A bespoke excel tool was created for Mary’s and data extracted from key reports and management information. This tool was designed to be used by Mary’s staff going forward, so it provided both a current snapshot and a method for capturing social return on investment into the future.

    When finalised, the work and results were presented to Mary’s Trustees, and can now be used to help tell the story of this well-respected organisation in the heart of the community.

    Case study 2: Douglas Valley Communities

    Sector:

      Focus of project:

      • Programme design / theory of change facilitation
      • Developing impact plans
      • Performance management
      • Data management & analysis
      • Building impact measurement tools

      Locality supported Douglas Valley Communities, a VCS infrastructure support agency for Wigan, to develop a social impact measurement system for the organisation. Douglas Valley Communities supports and manages 12 community centres across the borough, some managed directly and others supported by local volunteer management committees. Over several months Locality undertook work including workshops with the board of Douglas Valley to identify priorities and practicalities of impact measurement, particularly the challenge of measuring the impact of community centres which the organisation did not manage on a day to day basis.

      Locality supported the organisation to develop a theory of change to map out the social impact system in its entirety, and following the agreement of this, supported the development and implementation of the system. This included data capture tools and a database to report on the social impact information. This is now in place and is enabling Douglas Valley to record information about the assets, services delivered, volunteers involved, usage of facilities, the capability of groups and their support needs.

      Case study 3: Carers Network

      Sector:

      • Citizenship & community

      Focus of project:

      • Programme design / theory of change facilitation
      • Developing impact plans
      • Performance management
      • Data management & analysis
      • Building impact measurement tools

      Carers Network deliver services to Carers across Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham and the City of London. In 2016, the organisation decided it needed to review its approach to impact management as it had become slightly fragmented as a result of needing to report to a number of different funders. Locality worked with the staff team to map the outcomes from each area of work and how these fitted with Carers Network’s strategic priorities. Locality then developed a clear framework for collecting data against each of these outcomes in a manageable way – including ways to understand why carers had not accessed services or practitioners might not have made referrals, as well as measuring the positive impact many carers see as a result of their engagement.

      Finally, Locality undertook a review of all the data collection materials needed to collect the indicators identified so that Carers Network had all of the practical tools needed to implement the new impact framework.