In our recent announcement about the The Ideas Fund being extended for a further three years, we shared that the next phase of our work will include an increased emphasis on gathering evidence and sharing best practice about community-led partnerships with researchers.
In our recent announcement about The Ideas Fund being extended for a further three years, we shared that the next phase of our work will include an increased emphasis on gathering evidence and sharing best practice about community-led partnerships with researchers.
To that end, we are excited to share our new Impact Framework, which has been co-designed with a wide variety of partners over recent months with support from our Learning Partner, Collaborate CIC.
Having already learned a lot about the funding approach that works best in supporting these partnerships, and also the benefits for some of the individuals involved, we now hope to capture some of the wider impacts that we’ve been seeing to date, and take the opportunity to focus more on the ingredients that are leading to successful outcomes for communities and researchers.
The Impact Framework has been developed to help us reflect on and learn about the outcomes and impacts we believe are made possible by the Fund’s approach and its intention to rebalance power in research to communities, something we believe can contribute to greater real-world impact for communities.
The Impact Framework is in two parts:
- Introduction to The Ideas Fund Impact Framework – the introduction provides an overview of the structure and purpose of the framework
- The Impact Framework – we have also produced a summary version
Alongside developing programme learning questions, we’ll use this Impact Framework as a tool to surface learning about why and how change is happening, rather than measuring or ‘proving’ individual outcomes.
We intend for the framework to be:
- Ambitious and aspirational – capturing outcomes we’ve seen so far and those we believe are possible
- A living framework – which adapts and develops as we learn and progress
- A reflective tool – which helps us (and others) understand how The Ideas Fund is contributing to change
In the next phase of the Fund, we intend to explore this framework and the potential for impact more fully with a smaller cohort of our grant holders through a series of Evidence Building grants. This process is underway, and we’ll be sharing more information about these grants and the groups that we’ll be working with later this year.
We’re really interested in people’s thoughts and responses to the framework, and would welcome a conversation with anyone who wants to discuss the purpose, structure or use of the framework further. You can get in touch with the team at hello@theideasfund.org