The charity sector does not do enough to measure whether its campaigning achieves its goals, according to the author of a report published today by think tank NPC.
Cecilie Hestbaek, researcher and author of the NPC report Closing in on Change: Measuring the effectiveness of your campaign, said: “The debate around charity campaigning is in an almighty mess. Hostile MPs and pressure groups line up to attack charities on one side, while some major voices in the sector have ducked the challenge completely.”
NCVO, Acevo, lined up last month to criticise the Charity Commission’s proposal that charities should report how much they spend on campaigning in their annual return.
But Hestbaek said charities were defending the need to campaign without evidence that it achieved its goals.
“Does charity campaigning actually work?" she said. "Charities won’t be able to answer this without deciding on a goal for their work and then evaluating progress towards it.”
The report highlights that while impact measurement is gaining traction in some parts of the sector, “our conversations with campaigning charities have made us aware that many do not measure the impact of their campaigns because they lack the time and expertise”.
NPC argues by measuring the success of campaigns charities will be in a better position to justify resources spent on campaigning.
NPC produced a four step guide for measuring campaigning change:
- Identify the goal of their campaign
- Prioritise the data that is collected and measured
- Settle on the level of evidence needed to evaluate the success of a campaign
- Select the tools needed to evaluate the campaign
The think tank has also published Campaigning for social change, a briefing aimed at trustees explaining campaigning rules.
