Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is a charity with our own mission and strategy, but we do nothing alone – we fund or work with others to achieve our goals. So how can we evaluate whether our work is making a difference?
Over the course of our 2020- 2027 strategy, we’ve developed an approach to impact to grapple with big tensions: navigating breadth and complexity; maintaining both rigour at the same time as trust; and balancing our own learning needs with those of the organisations we fund and work alongside.
This overview is intended to help our partners and the organisations we fund to understand our “open and trusting” approach to impact.
Principles for monitoring, evaluation and learning
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Open and trusting – only asking for information we need and use, and sharing what we find.
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Realistic about our contribution – recognising that our actions and funding are one part of a complex process of change.
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Long-term – committing to track and consider change over many years, and to build evidence for future decisions.
Open and trusting grant making
Led by the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR), the Open and Trusting Grant-making movement promotes funding practices that reduce burdens on charities and help them focus on impact through greater transparency, flexibility, and shared risk.
North Wales Wildlife Trust
Next: Learning across a broad strategy
Esmée’s impact and learning approach focuses on understanding progress, challenges, and opportunities across its strategy, using insights from the organisations and projects it supports.