Background
The Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund invested up to £30 million to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England. The KYN Fund was established to enable targeted high-deprivation local authorities, and the local voluntary and community sector in these places, to implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage volunteering and tackle loneliness. It also aimed to increase the proportion of people in these areas who volunteer at least once a month and reduce the proportion of chronically lonely people who lack their desired level of social connections.
Fortia Insight (formerly part of RSM UK Consulting LLP) and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) were commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to undertake an overarching evaluation of the KYN Fund in January 2023. Fortia Insight and NatCen were responsible for delivering an impact, process and value for money (VfM) evaluation at the fund level. The evaluation also included a parallel quasi-experimental design (QED) methodology to build the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness.
Report linkChallenges
- Extensive primary data collection: We conducted 14 interviews with delivery partners in March 2023 and 40 interviews across projects (n=25) and delivery partners (n=15) from November 2023 to January 2024. Additionally, we co-developed a survey with DCMS and evaluation partners that captures key demographic data, including ethnicity, biological sex, gender identity and age and outcome data on volunteering, wellbeing, loneliness, skills, confidence and pride in local area.
- Complex evaluation structure: The interim report draws on findings from interviews (detailed above) and an initial sample of beneficiary and volunteer baseline survey data. We deemed it not necessary to conduct interviews with beneficiaries and volunteers for this evaluation. Such interviews are included within the methodologies of one QED evaluation, placed-based evaluations and arm’s length body (ALB) and UK Community Foundations evaluations conducted by Fortia Insight, NatCen, Economic Research Services (ERS), Forever Consulting (FC) and other evaluation partners. This reduces burden on projects and their participants. The final evaluation report will synthesise the findings of the previously mentioned evaluations to ensure that beneficiaries’ and volunteers’ views are represented.
- Evaluating in real time: Our evaluation is live, alongside the delivery of the fund. This allowed us to develop interim recommendations aimed at the fund going forward and any future interventions of a similar nature or focus.
- Implementing a QED in a third sector context: In order to ensure impact evaluation designs are suitably robust and strengthen and add to the existing evidence base around what works, we are delivering one QED study.
Impacts
As part of our interim reporting, we explored the baseline survey data to explore early indications of whether the KYN Fund was meeting its target audience. The final report will explore impact findings from our qualitative interviews, baseline and endline surveys and a synthesis of evaluations carried out by other evaluation partners.