Our role in the partnership required both close examination of what was happening within live programmes, but also stepping back to understand how the different parts of the foundations work connected.

Understanding the system

To enable us to understand these interconnections, we brought together information from the Growth Fund, Reach Fund and Connect Fund into a layered map of funding, support and relationships. It showed where money was flowing, which organisations were connected, which places and communities were being reached as well as where the system depended heavily on a small number of intermediaries. It also revealed gaps and inconsistencies in the underlying data.

As Access’s questions developed, so did the maps. We widened the view to look at the social investment market, then turned it around by placing charities and social enterprises at the centre and showing the different funders and intermediaries around them. This gave Access a way to ask not only whether individual funds were delivering, but who was missing, where organisations encountered bottlenecks and whether the finance and support available reflected what they actually needed.

Inside the programmes

FWe combined this wider view with detailed learning from inside individual programmes. During our evaluation of the Enterprise Development Programme, in-depth data analysis and visualisation helped us understand who was applying for and receiving support; which groups, sectors and areas were under-represented; and where approval rates differed. Qualitative research with partners and participating organisations helped us understand what sat behind these patterns, including how risk was interpreted and how judgements about readiness, income and reserves shaped decisions.

The evaluation also showed the value of investing early in feasibility and support, often helping an organisation develop a stronger enterprise model and contributing to a more robust and sustainable organisation, even if they did not eventually progress to the social investment stage.

“Consultants often do a good job of recycling what you already know, but in a neat and coherent way. Working with the Curiosity Society is so much more valuable than that: they change how we think.”

Seb Elsworth, Chief Executive at Access

The role of relationships in the system

The Local Access programme focused on building stronger social economies through six place-based partnerships across England. Developed by Access and Big Society Capital, the ten-year programme combined enterprise support and blended social investment, with each local partnership given considerable freedom to decide what its area needed.

We were involved in the program from the design and selection stages, helping Access think through a central tension in the programme: how a national funder could give local partnerships meaningful control while remaining accountable for substantial funds.

After developing Local Access’s theory of change and impact framework, we then carried out a two phase evaluation across 2 years that focused on the partnerships themselves. 

We created a framework that looked at both the internal health of a partnership and how well it operated within its wider place. It covered ten areas: commitment, composition, capital, creativity, cohesion, inclusion, legitimacy, alignment, influence and opportunities. We wanted to understand the ingredients for successful long term partnerships whether the relational infrastructure of an area was strengthened as result of the programme

This gave individual partnerships a practical way to discuss issues that can easily remain unspoken and helped Access distinguish between short-term delivery difficulties and deeper questions about cohesion, legitimacy or power. The work demonstrated that evaluating a partnership is not only about tracking its activities and outputs. It means understanding the quality of its relationships, who participates in decisions, and whether it is becoming more capable of acting collectively over time.

As our official partnership drew to an end we co-created Five Lessons Five Years and The Story So Far, drawing together evidence from across the portfolio to show how Access’s work and thinking had developed. Building this shared account helped the team use the learning it captured to shape its strategy and future work.