Sector must analyse its outcomes, says Hope

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 7 Feb 2008

Charities have yet to achieve their full potential and the only way they will is by analysing why they do what they do, according to minister for the third sector Phil Hope.

Hope was speaking this week at ‘Measuring outcomes: demonstrating success in the third sector’, a conference hosted by Barnardo’s.

He said that only by looking both inwards as well as outwards would the sector really understand what it was achieving and “begin to raise its game”.

“It’s not just about proving the case that third sector organisations make a difference but is also about improving the way [the sector] goes about doing it,” he said. “While the sector is flourishing it could be aiming much higher. The true potential of the sector is yet to be achieved.”

He went on to say that just because it was difficult to measure the impact of charities’ work due to the fact that many of their outcomes reach beyond the beneficiary, it does not mean they avoid doing it.

Tough questions about the sector’s effectiveness have been asked for many years and they are not going to go away, he said, before adding that evaluation would be one of the roles of the new third sector research center that is to receive £10m of government funding over the next five years.

The new centre will be based at a university in order to give it “credibility”, said Hope. The Economic and Social Research Council is running the tender process for universities wanting to run the centre, which closes on 27 March and it is expected that the centre will be up and running by the autumn.

Directory: Office of the Third Sector
Who's Who: Becky Slack

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