Report reveals how grantmakers use and share evidence on what works

Howard Lake | 24 July 2013 | News

The Alliance for Useful Evidence has published a report that looks at how a small group of UK grantmaking organisations use and share evidence on how their funding works.

The 26-page report 'The secrets of success? How funders use and share evidence in practice' reveals what evidence they draw on, how they find it, and how they use it. It also looks at how they share this evidence to inform the decisions of others, including funders, practitioners and policymakers.

The Alliance is an open–access network of 1,000 individuals from across government, universities, charities, business and local authorities in the UK and internationally. It champions the use of evidence in social policy and practice. It is funded by the BIG Lottery Fund, the Economic and Social Research Council and Nesta.

The report covers a range of issues and challenges faced by funders in gathering, interpreting and sharing evidence, including:

• will a move towards more evidence-based funding act as a straitjacket on innovation, especially for smaller grantmakers and recipients?
   
• can funders spot the difference between grant recipients providing good evidence and those achieving good outcomes?
   
• what counts as evidence and what counts as 'good enough'?

Do funders know enough about what works? 

The report found:

·         Funders could make better use of the evidence they do hold by sharing it more widely. While funders regularly share evidence with other funders, they are not always as active in sharing evidence with practitioners and policymakers.

·         Funders are keen to know and share what works, but may have limited knowledge about the relative impact and cost effectiveness of different interventions.

·         Funders draw on a wide range of evidence sources to inform strategic reviews and funding programmes; they also place significant emphasis on staff expertise to assess individual funding bids.

·         The main types of evidence that funders use (e.g. scoping, synthesis, application forms) are different to the main types of evidence they generate (e.g. impact reporting) and share with others (e.g. evaluations).

·         Grantees may be nervous about sharing evidence with funders and their evidence can be of variable quality – funders need mechanisms to help address this.

Questions for funders

The report includes a number of questions for grantmaking organisations to consider in view of the research findings. These include:

• How confident are you about the evidence gleaned from your grantees?
   
• Could there be added value in sharing more of the evidence you receive and use with others?
   
• What funding, policy or other barriers do your grantees face that limit their impact or scale?

Other opportunities

The report, which concludes with a literature review, also highlights the potential for funders of open data, the new What Works centres, and social media and online evidence tools.

The report, while aimed at funders, also makes useful reading for fundraisers seeking funding, especially those who recognise that impact reporting is likely to become more important for more funders.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.