Edinburgh School Uniform Bank’s (ESUB) work is about helping children look and feel smart at school, to feel that they belong, and to avoid the negative effects of hardship on their wellbeing and education.
ESS facilitated two tailored support sessions with Edinburgh School Uniform Bank that focused mainly on evaluation methods.
ESUB Staff and Board were already very clear about the difference they make – but were unsure how to measure it.
One of their challenges was that they have little direct contact with families and children – as their work is often done via referrers.
ESUB felt that some of the evidence they gathered didn’t reflect the longer term impact of their work.
What difference did we make?
We encouraged ESUB to stick with evaluating their most important outcomes – even if they seemed difficult to gather evidence about. We then helped ESUB to identify appropriate, measurable indicators before moving on to think about methods.
ESUB does occasionally have direct contact with families, (e.g. at pop-up stalls) so we talked about how they could use creative methods like body maps and sticky walls to gather some evidence directly from families and children on those occasions.
“[ESS] helped us develop an outcomes framework and reviewed the tools we were already using and made many very useful suggestions on how we can improve the way we collate data. We already have used some of these suggestions in practice and it worked really well.”
– Johanna Wesemann, Edinburgh School Uniform Bank Operations Coordinator
What did we learn?
Projects may end up selling themselves short by setting outcomes that they find easier to measure. An important part of our role is to give people the confidence to talk about what matters most!
Do you need help with evaluation methods?
Our principles for good evaluation can help you to judge if you are happy with your evaluation. They are used within this story to highlight the principles that are being demonstrated:
– Good evaluation should be about what matters
– Good evaluation should fit the way you do your work
See below for the case-study that this story is based on:
Case Study: Edinburgh School Uniform Bank (ESUB)
ESS worked with ESUB to help review their evaluation methods. This case study is an example of ESS’s evaluation principles – good evaluation should be about what matters, and fits the way you work.