Giving Compass' Take:

• Oliver Carrington highlights benefits from the efforts of ten NHS charities that joined forces to develop a shared measurement pilot.

• Which charities could use shared evaluation to reap these benefits? What barriers to this type of collaboration can funders address? 

• Read about developing an equitable evaluation infrastructure. 

We found three shared measurement benefits which we think should apply to other charities and funders.

1. Cutting down on duplication
It’s a no-brainer that pooling ideas from ten charities to create one shared approach, with the same survey questions and grants data format, uses up less time and effort than it would take to develop ten unique versions.

2. Comparing against peers
Benchmarking against the cohort average is the most rewarding part of shared measurement—seeing how we stand in relation to others. Without a point of reference for comparison, anyone can look at a statistic and think ‘so what?’.

3. Building an evidence base
Shared measurement allows charities to gather comparable data on what works within its group and then ‘steal’ the best ideas to support their own NHS trust.

Working together makes cross-learning much more likely. It doesn’t end with just a statistic, instead it prompts further questions that get us thinking about how to improve.

Read the full article about collaboration in evaluation by Oliver Carrington at NPC.