Together for good – the client challenge
Our Village (formerly St Kilda Mums, Geelong Mums, and Eureka Mums) rehomes early childhood essentials to families in need across Victoria. With an ambitious goal to support every child in need by 2030 (a five-fold increase in their current reach), they faced the challenge of significantly scaling up their operations in an efficient, measurable way.
Cube was engaged to provide support to Our Village to enhance their in-house monitoring and evaluation capabilities so that they could track their growing impact. We started by developing an “Evaluation 101” approach to embed key evaluation principles and practices in the Our Village team.
Bringing the right thinking and people to the table
While building the foundations for evaluation, we worked with Our Village’s team to co-design key evaluation materials, including:
A refined program logic model to intuitively map out their overarching objectives, activities, and intended outcomes;
An accessible evaluation framework to guide the team in ongoing monitoring and evaluation efforts; and
An impact snapshot for the team to leverage existing data and tell their story of impact to stakeholders.
The positive change we delivered
Throughout the engagement, accessibility, scalability, and sustainability were front of mind. This led to an evaluation framework that considered both Our Village’s current capacity and the organisation’s long-term growth plans. The framework supported Our Village in demonstrating how their organisation could work most effectively by linking their actions with short-, medium- and longer-term outcomes.
The structured approach to monitoring and evaluation gave the team greater confidence in the rigour behind their impact reporting. This has supported Our Village in applying impact measurement principles in their everyday operations.
With these new skills and resources, Our Village can confidently monitor future performance, effectively report their outcomes to key stakeholders, and quantify the real-world impact of their support for families across Victoria.
This work laid important groundwork for strategic operational planning and stakeholder engagement (including donors) as they work toward their 2030 vision.
Insights for inquisitive minds
Guide your approach with sustainability and scalability. Don’t parachute in with short-term solutions. Designing solutions for longevity and growth from the start leads to longer lasting impact. With Our Village, we intentionally crafted a framework that was flexible for their future.
Demystifying builds confidence. Even the best approach can produce lackluster results if it’s not agreed upon and implemented by internal team members. Investing in training from the beginning can help increase knowledge and build the common foundation required for successful implementation.
Measurement is key to great impact. Building tools that help measure and analyse impact is more than a theoretical exercise. This data helps organisations make decisions about what services are most valuable, develop compelling information to share with donors, and see trends in program effectiveness over time.
