Jim Cooke shares our plans to learn about how we can improve the Hub's impact, engagement and sustainability, and some of the ways you can get involved.
Last year, we set up a new Impact and Learning Advisory Group, bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise to support ACF in our work to maximise the long-term impact and sustainability of the Funders Collaborative Hub.
We’ve worked with this group to create a learning plan, which aims to answer three key questions that will inform the future evolution of the Hub:
- Impact – how can the Hub best contribute to funders achieving stronger practice?
- Engagement – how can the Hub best engage the people who it is most relevant to?
- Financial sustainability – how can the Hub deliver value for money as part of ACF’s long-term offer?
Here is an overview of some of our upcoming plans to answer these questions, and ways you can get involved.
Collaboration leaders survey
The first major step in our learning plan is a survey we sent this week to nearly 200 collaboration leaders who have shared collaboration opportunities on the Hub. Through this, we aim to learn more about:
- What these collaborations were hoping to achieve
- To what extent they achieved their aims, and what helped or hindered this
- How and why they used the Funders Collaborative Hub, and to what extent this was helpful
- What other methods or sources of support they used to develop their collaboration
- Their understanding and views of the Hub’s enhanced service offer.
These insights will be invaluable for shaping the future direction of the Hub. If you’ve received this survey (which you should have done if you are a main contact for a collaboration opportunity listed on the Hub), please do find 15 minutes to complete it if you can.
If you think you should have received this and haven’t, please get in touch.
As well as hearing from collaboration leaders and ACF members, we know there are lots of other voices, views and experiences we can learn from.
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Stronger Foundations self-assessment data
The impact we want to achieve through the Hub is not just more collaboration for its own sake. Rather, we want funders to see collaboration, in its various forms, as part of the toolbox they can use to strengthen their overall practice.
Stronger Foundations is ACF’s framework to help foundations aspire to and achieve excellent practice. I’ve previously written (here and here) about the links between collaboration and the six themes of Stronger Foundations.
ACF members can access a self-assessment tool that enables them to reflect on their progress and consider areas for development on each of these themes.
By completing the self-assessment tool, members also contribute to our understanding of what foundations are already doing well, and which areas they might need more support with. For example, we know from previous self-assessment data that in relation to collaboration, foundations rate their progress as more advanced on ‘awareness of the external context and their role in the wider ecosystem’ and less advanced on ‘collaborating with others to promote and implement DEI practices’.
We’ll continue to analyse data from the tool to identify further insights on how collaboration is contributing to stronger practice, and any challenges we can help foundations to address. We encourage all ACF members to consider using the tool to assess your own progress.
Inviting feedback from all Hub users and stakeholders
As well as hearing from collaboration leaders and ACF members, we know there are lots of other voices, views and experiences we can learn from.
For example:
- Have you joined a collaboration you saw on the Hub?
- Have you considered sharing an opportunity on the Hub but something has stopped you from doing so?
- Have you used the Hub to access learning and resources from other collaborations?
- Are you a charity or other civil society organisation that has seen any impact of collaboration – either positive or negative – on how funders work?
We’ll soon be developing our next survey, which will be open to anyone who either has experience of using the Hub in any capacity, or has other perspectives on funder collaboration. With more than 1,500 subscribers to the Hub newsletter, and 29,000 unique users of our website in the last year, we would like to hear from as broad a range of people as possible.
Look out for updates on this in the coming months. In the meantime, we always welcome feedback about the Hub, which you can share with us any time by emailing us.
Get in touch
Do you have any feedback on the Hub, or something you’re working on that you think we might be able to help with?
The Funders Collaborative Hub publishes a range of perspectives. The views expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily those of ACF.
