My programme recieves funding from primarily 1 source, a Housing Partnership . To identify their "value for money" investement they, like many other investors in the main choose to identify the numbers of young people engaged as their main indicator on the projects success.
My project has the personal development of young people as the main core aim and I find numbers of engagement is a very poor way of assessing the success of the overall project and therefore cannot reflect true value for money to the investor.
For instance, the project aims are to prevent young people from steering towards the Criminal Justice System therefore saving the community valuable taxpeyers money. Additional benefits are the the community benefits from the reduction in ASB.
SROI (as and eveluation tool) is something I am aware of which potentially could apply to the young people on the project which would assist our funders to continiue with the project.
e.g. We have recently employed one of the young people who had attended sessions with the project. Prior to the project he was about to be issued with an ASBO. What monetary value does this represent to my funders?
The Police are able to provide financial figures (costs) on the numbers of service calls they may recieve as a result of a young persons involvement of ASB. They also have a price for how much it would cost for officers to attend a burglary or other offences.
Additionally, court costs, social services, schools, family intervention costs could all be applied. And what would be the cost saving to the local community who may have suffered at the hands of ASB from young people. This is a significant benefit (but how do you apply a cost to emotional stress etc?). It seems almost impossible to assess and apply a monetary value which benefits the community, but nevertheless there must be a way of doing so.
So, if my project was to steer just 1
young person away from "the life of
crime"
1) How much is it worth to the Police, Community, Council etc in monetary terms?
2) The potential social impact to the community in less ASB etc must also have a cost saving.
Which (easy to use) tools are available to hard working project leaders like myself to help monitor and accurately evaluate all of the outcomes (with financial savings) so we are able to present to our funders in the hope that they continue to support the programme.
There must be many other projects who have similar issues.
Mark
My programme recieves funding from primarily 1 source, a Housing Partnership . To identify their "value for money" investement they, like many other investors in the main choose to identify the numbers of young people engaged as their main indicator on the projects success.
My project has the personal development of young people as the main core aim and I find numbers of engagement is a very poor way of assessing the success of the overall project and therefore cannot reflect true value for money to the investor.
For instance, the project aims are to prevent young people from steering towards the Criminal Justice System therefore saving the community valuable taxpeyers money. Additional benefits are the the community benefits from the reduction in ASB.
SROI (as and eveluation tool) is something I am aware of which potentially could apply to the young people on the project which would assist our funders to continiue with the project.
e.g. We have recently employed one of the young people who had attended sessions with the project. Prior to the project he was about to be issued with an ASBO. What monetary value does this represent to my funders?
The Police are able to provide financial figures (costs) on the numbers of service calls they may recieve as a result of a young persons involvement of ASB. They also have a price for how much it would cost for officers to attend a burglary or other offences.
Additionally, court costs, social services, schools, family intervention costs could all be applied. And what would be the cost saving to the local community who may have suffered at the hands of ASB from young people. This is a significant benefit (but how do you apply a cost to emotional stress etc?). It seems almost impossible to assess and apply a monetary value which benefits the community, but nevertheless there must be a way of doing so.
1) How much is it worth to the Police, Community, Council etc in monetary terms? 2) The potential social impact to the community in less ASB etc must also have a cost saving.
Which (easy to use) tools are available to hard working project leaders like myself to help monitor and accurately evaluate all of the outcomes (with financial savings) so we are able to present to our funders in the hope that they continue to support the programme.
There must be many other projects who have similar issues.