Social Economy

I work with social enterprises, co-operatives, voluntary and community organisations to:

Evaluate initiatives and projects

Assess the impact of services and how they can be improved

Innovate and develop new activities and initiatives

Recent work includes:

  • Pie Factory Music, Ramsgate: a workshop with staff to help develop a Theory of Change for this youth / creative organisation.
  • External evaluation (theory and process based) of Project Liberty, a Lottery-funded service offered by the domestic violence and abuse charity Rising Sun to support women and girls.
  • Working with the Board of Dreamland Trust Margate, its volunteers and public and private-sector partners to develop a new Business Plan for the organisation as it develops its activities focused more on its community role, exhibitions, archives, education and community projects.
  • Working with the Corn Exchange Theatre, Newbury to develop a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Framework for the Ageing Creatively programme, which offers creative workshops and courses for older people to engage with the arts. Then supported the implementation of the Framework and undertook an external evaluation of the programme.
  • Offering a workshop and individual ‘surgeries’ on evaluation and assessing impact at the Offline Festival 2017 for community businesses, social enterprises and charities focused on social change and positive impact in their community;
  • Researching the growth of the Solidarity Economy in Catalonia (article in Stir to Action, January 2017);
  • Undertaking a Governance Review of the Fort Amherst Heritage Trust, as it gears up to expand its offer to the community with a significant Heritage Lottery Funding grant;
  • Supporting the domestic violence and abuse charity Rising Sun to develop a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan for its Big Lottery funded Project Liberty;
  • A project for the London Enterprise Panel and CITB with Dr Jonathan Pratt, the Open University’s Co-operatives Research Unit, Co-operatives UK and a number of local authority stakeholders to identify how construction co-ops could collaborate for better access to public sector contracts.

I was also involved in the evaluation of Project Dirt, a social network that connects and resources community projects. This was an especially interesting project, given the network’s focus on environmental action and our use of the NCVO’s Pathways Through Participation model to inform our evaluation framework. This short paper that I co-authored gives more detail on the approach.

If you think I can be of help to you in your work, do get in touch!