Measuring impact for St Martin-in-the-Fields' 'network of networks'

Client: St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity
Date: November 2023 — July 2024
Work: Impact measurement, Research and analysis

About the organisation

St Martin-in-the-Fields (St Martin’s) is a UK-wide charity which funds nine networks of frontline workers in the homelessness sector under the umbrella of the ‘Frontline Network’. The aim of these networks is to provide training and professional development, share best practice between members, and provide a voice to inform local and national policy. We were commissioned to support St Martin’s to understand more about how the component Frontline Networks operated and how they could collectively measure their impact on frontline homelessness workers.

What we did

We conducted semi-structured interviews with the leaders of the nine networks, each of whom were based in different host organisations. We also reviewed the latest performance reports and data submitted by the Frontline Networks to St Martin’s.

We then ran a collaborative one-day, in-person workshop with the network leads and St Martin’s staff to co-develop a theory of change for the ‘network of networks’. This gave them the opportunity to think about the changes the networks were collectively aiming to facilitate, while recognising they had different levels of capacity, influence and resource in their organisations. We ensured through our facilitation, design and subsequent synthesis of the output that the views of network leads and funder staff were equitable and aimed at consensus.

Workshop participants said:

“Never had these things explained in such a clear and accessible way, and with expert facilitation”

“I was surprised how much was achieved, it didn’t feel as hard as I thought it might”

We developed the workshop output into a theory of change and impact measurement framework, which we refined iteratively in collaboration with St Martin’s.

We specified a standard set of measures for each network to collect, which would then be collated and analysed overall by St Martin’s. We also recommended ways to improve data collection procedures.