Measuring Impact - Nicva

Identifying & categorising the sector’s impacts 19
In this chapter, an analysis of the impact reported by these organisations is presented. The
description of types of impact across a range of organisations enables the identification of the
overall impact of the voluntary sector. Furthermore, an analysis of the distribution of types of
impact across the voluntary sector may help in the development of tools for investigating
particular types of impact not addressed by the existing range of approaches.
Methodology 4.2
The study used a postal questionnaire comprising 16 questions. Respondents were asked to
choose either their whole organisation or a single project and answer questions on:
• the project or organisation’s aims;
• inputs (people involved, funding, income, benefits in kind);
• whether a needs assessment had been carried out prior to the work starting;
• beneficiaries;
• outputs and outcomes;
• whether it was felt that the aims had been achieved;
• the ‘wider or secondary benefit’ that resulted from the work;
• whether any evaluation had been carried out.
The questionnaire was piloted with six organisations and amended as necessary.
Organisations were systematically sampled from a database of over 25,000 voluntary organisations
operating in Wales, with initial telephone contact before sending the questionnaire. The
return rate at this stage was too low to continue. The questionnaire was then sent to all of
WCVA’s 800 member organisations, and a further 500 organisations randomly sampled from
the database. This resulted in 101 responses. A further 60 case-studies of health and social care
organisations were obtained from telephone interviews using the same questionnaire.
All the responses were entered onto a database and a summary was produced for each casestudy
which was then signed off by the organisation in question. The text of the summary
was then analysed qualitatively using a colour coding method. Types of impact and outcomes
were identified and categorised into four levels (individual, community, organisation or
general) that were adapted from levels described for outcomes by the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation (2002). The distribution of these descriptors across different areas of voluntary
activity was then analysed.