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Approach

The Impact & Insight Toolkit (Toolkit) provides Arts Council England (ACE) funded organisations with evaluation tools and support from a friendly and experienced team, free of charge!

Our evaluation approach has been designed to provide value to you as an organisation first and foremost. This means having the tools to set your own definitions of success by describing your ambitions, and then the ability to measure your progress against your ambitions. This can be achieved using feedback collected from the people who experience your work. The feedback is collected and can be analysed using an online evaluation platform called Culture Counts. Through doing this, organisations can use evaluation to help inform their own decisions and be well-equipped with data-driven evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work to funders.

Getting Started

  1. Register

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    Register

    Start by registering your organisation to use the Toolkit. Once your registration has been processed, you’ll receive your ‘Getting Started’ pack, with access to the Culture Counts platform and support from the Counting What Counts (CWC) team.

  2. Articulate your ambitions

    Illustration of people sitting around a table

    Articulate your ambitions

    We know your organisation has some big ambitions for what you want to achieve. The Toolkit will help you to describe your ambitions using standardised metrics called dimensions and then store these in the platform. We recommend your board or senior leadership team does this step before creating and running surveys.

  3. Collect data

    Illustration of person creating a survey with text reading ‘after today’s performance, did you feel that you understood something new about the world?’

    Collect data

    Easily create surveys with your chosen dimensions and use them to collect feedback from people that experience your work. You can customise your surveys by creating your own questions and choosing from a collection of ready-made questions. Surveys can be carried out online or offline, in-person or shared via email and social media. Collected data is stored securely in a database for immediate analysis or later reporting.

     

  4. Report, reflect and learn

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    Report, reflect and learn

    The Toolkit includes a range of useful reporting tools. These include a flexible Insights Report which can be generated automatically for any evaluation; in-platform analysis tools to track and investigate live data as it comes in; and a comprehensive end of year report designed to show your progress against your ambitions. Use your reports to reflect on your ambitions and inform future decision making.

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How does articulating my ambitions work?

Articulating your ambitions is about converting the ambitions for your organisation into a measurable form. This is achieved by choosing dimensions which relate to your ambitions and which you feel are good indicators that your ambitions are being met.

What is a dimension? A dimension is a survey question which has been co-created with the cultural sector and which is designed to measure specific aspects of your work. There are dozens of different dimensions for you to choose from, covering many different outcomes. We’ll provide you with a Dimensions Framework and guidance on articulating your ambitions, to help you find the dimensions that are right for you.

Reporting Tools

The Toolkit comes with a range of reporting tools designed to help you explore and make sense of the data you are collecting.

We will provide you with bespoke reports, free of charge, to help you understand what the data you collect says. They will show progress by relating the results of your evaluations back to your articulated ambitions. They are designed to make the most of the available data. The more in-depth your reporting activities, the richer the reports we can create – take a look at our insight and learning guidance to understand what you need to do to unlock richer reports. Toolkit users have access to four different reporting tools:

  1. Insights Report
  2. Analytics Dashboard
  3. Activity Report
  4. Ambition Progress Report
Insights Report Screenshot showing radar charts, bar charts and data tables

Insights Report

Can be generated from an evaluation in the Culture Counts platform. They can be created by you, at any time.

Screenshot of the interactive Analytics Dashboard

Analytics Dashboard

Allows you to explore your data as it comes in. Charts from the dashboard can be downloaded as images which you can then include in your own reports or presentations.

Screenshot of the front page of an Activity Report

Activity Report

Generated through the Reporting Dashboard, Activity Reports show your evaluation progress to help you check you’re on track.

Screenshot of an Ambition Progress Report

Ambition Progress Report

Generated through the Reporting Dashboard, these are designed to show progress against your ambitions. It also presents analysis and comparison of your evaluated work. Ambition Progress Reports can be included in your board papers which are seen by Arts Council England, ensuring you can show your commitment to evaluation and the Ambition & Quality Investment Principle.