The challenge
Our Sustainability and Economics practice has been working with Channel Islands governments, charity partners and wider stakeholders for several years on the challenges and opportunities for the islands in shaping sustainable development that works for everyone.
Through our research into societal trends and social needs, we discovered a significant gap in local knowledge on how to assess impacts and value in the third sector. Although well-established in the international development, private and public sectors, we found local charities and similar non-profit organisations often lack robust metrics to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work. We also found that the critical role the third sector plays in delivering government objectives and services was often not well understood at decision-making levels in government.
With government and philanthropic funders increasingly making decisions based on quantified performance, the absence of a common language can create obstacles to raising funds, prioritising resources, influencing policy and, fundamentally, demonstrating that charities are effective at doing what they exist to do.
We thought that combining our experience and insight from other sectors and elsewhere, together with local knowledge, could provide an end-to-end approach appropriate and usable by charities in the local context. We embarked on a thought leadership initiative to seek to address this, and our PwC Channel Islands Impact Accelerator was launched in summer 2023.
Our approach
We initially worked with three Jersey charities to develop a thought leadership programme to help third sector organisations review and articulate their societal purpose, monitor and report their quantified impacts in monetary terms, and sustain their focus through ongoing changes. These were the Jersey Community Foundation, the Jersey Employment Trust and the National Trust for Jersey.
We focused on addressing three common obstacles that each organisation faced:
- Knowing the nature of its impact, to focus its priorities and activities on a clear vision and effective outcomes
- Having a narrative that tells a credible story to supporters and policymakers
- Sustaining and diversifying income, by demonstrating outcomes clearly
We focused on building the charities’ own capabilities and equipping each organisation to fully own its impact assessment process. Over six months, we worked hand in hand with the charities to help them clarify their thinking and produce analyses and materials in their own branding.
We developed a four phase programme that was then tailored to each charity:
- Theory of Change workshops helped participants agree on a shared vision, explore each charity’s desired long-term impacts, and identify the specific outcomes that would achieve them.
- A Baseline Assessment enabled each charity to quantify its social, economic and environmental value, source the relevant data and visualise it with Power BI, then benchmark the results against comparable organisations. This provided key impact metrics in monetary terms, demonstrating return for every £1 spent.
- Impact Monitoring & Reporting Guidance equipped each charity to use the ongoing insights to inform its decision-making and external reporting.
- An Impact Framework was co-developed with each organisation, giving them a mechanism for assessing and monitoring changes over time
Our legacy
Our work has established a new and distinctive approach to assessing impacts in the Jersey context. It has empowered the three participating charities to move forwards in different ways.
By bringing together strategy, monitoring, evaluation and impact, the organisations have been able to demonstrate their social, economic and environmental benefits in monetary terms that speak effectively to a wide range of funders, donors and other stakeholders. Each participating organisation already has powerful stories of impact and accelerated change arising from applying the outputs.
The work is also scaling beyond the initial three charities in different ways:
- Jersey’s charity sector has come together in new ways for the first time to consider how to work together for impact, and has commissioned further research into the value of the third sector in Jersey
- The work is scaling beyond Jersey in wider contexts in the Channel Islands, in the UK and across the PwC network - in the third sector and also beyond - in government and in the impact investing sector
In summer 2024 we were delighted to be shortlisted for a UK Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Award, in the Best Use of Thought Leadership category, in recognition of our role in changing the conversation about the role of the third sector in Jersey and beyond.
We are continuing to scale our Impact Accelerator - please do reach out if you would like to discuss opportunities for collaboration.
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