Here’s some more free and useful resources charities may be able to benefit from:
Inspiring Impact helps charities understand impact measurement in a two-step process. The first step is assessment of your organisation’s impact measurement process, entailing completion of an online self-diagnostic questionnaire called “Measuring Up!” which poses questions like, “Do you use evidence to understand your work?” and “Do you describe the positive outcomes you want to achieve for your beneficiaries?” (Those questions were taken from the questionnaire for organisations with turnover of less than £100k/year. There is also a self-diagnostic for larger organisations, whose impact measurement is more advanced.) Upon completing the test, Measuring Up! “grades” your impact assessment practice, highlighting areas for improvement. At that point, you can access the site’s Resource Hub to address whatever particular deficiencies have been flagged by Measuring Up! Note that their resource hub does have free tools for impact measurement (as opposed to determining whether you’re doing a good job of measuring your impact) and guidance about how to set up an impact measurement system suitable for your organisation.
With 9 million members, divided into local sub-communities, Freecycle is the biggest consumer-to-consumer marketplace of free items in the world. Members can list items they’re seeking or wish to donate. Donors and seekers communicate directly to coordinate pickup and collection. Since this is a consumer network, items on Freecycle range from cat toys to computers. For charities, this is a great forum for sourcing domestic items.
3. The Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI)
The Foundation for Social Investment is both an online information hub and holds conferences, webinars, seminars and training courses very regularly for small charities with turnover of less than £1.5M, The topic areas covered by FSI literally encompass 360° of managing a charity, from IT to fundraising, governance, GDPR, the consequences of Brexit, etc. You have to pay a small fee to participate in face-to-face learning but web conferences and online lessons are free to charities making less than £1.5M annually.
