New Client: VocalEyes

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The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, VocalEyes. We are going to be working with VocalEyes to evaluate their Heritage Access 2022 project.

An ambitious project working with 50 volunteers, Heritage Access 2022, will support and train volunteer access researchers in a large-scale digital volunteering project that will benefit over 3,000 heritage sites in the UK and their visitors.

VocalEyes (great name!) helps bring arts and culture to life for blind and visually impaired people. They support arts and heritage venues through audio description services, training, consultancy and advice. You can see more about VocalEyes on their website here. 

We’re hiring!

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Evaluator Needed

Salary £24-27,000 FT

  • Part time applicants considered
  • Hybrid working model, mainly home working with at least one day a week in the office in Barnoldswick, Lancashire
  • Some travel is required, access to a car and full driving licence is essential

The Evaluator is a fast-growing evaluation consultancy founded in 2017 by Kirsty Rose Parker. Helping charities and not for profit organisations to demonstrate the impact of their work creatively and visually. The Evaluator uses the tagline “We’ll figure it out for you”.

 

We are often ‘measuring the unmeasurable’ and fixing problems on a day-to-day basis. The tasks included in this work range from data capture, face to face consultations, telephone calls, research, analysis, report writing, visual data creation, presenting information and creative problem solving. We work at a range of levels including strategically and operationally.

 

 

As the business is growing fast, we need another two evaluators, and are willing to consider full and part time applicants. We are particularly keen to recruit a ‘people-person’ who loves chatting to people and helping people to tell their stories.  We are prepared to train the right applicants; you do not need to have worked as an evaluator previously. We think personality and skills matter more than experience in this role.

 

We want someone who:

  • Is comfortable talking to a wide range of people and skilled at helping people feel comfortable and getting the best from conversations
  • A great listener who can nurture people and groups to express themselves
  • Is a brilliant report writer
  • Has an eye for detail, as attention to detail matters in this role
  • Can interpret data and read spreadsheets, tables and graphs
  • Is passionate about solving problems and making the world better
  • Is honest, reliable, punctual, willing to learn and enthusiastic.

Desirables include:

  • A maths or economics qualification
  • Customer service experience
  • Evaluation experience
  • Social return on investment experience
  • Business development or sales experience
  • Project Management experience
  • Some experience of the charity/ not for profit/ public sector

In return; The Evaluator can offer an exciting and dynamic work opportunity where every day is different, and we are often making a difference to people’s lives. This is work that means something. Current projects include conservation, heritage building work, opportunities for Deaf and disabled people in the music industry, exploring how wellbeing and nature interact, measuring the impact of long-term arts projects, national festivals and working with long term unemployed and some offenders.

 

We are looking for someone who is happy to work from home for the time being, able to travel to East Lancashire once a week for one office day, happy to travel around as part of the work undertaken.  Our clients are all over the UK, although travel is not a regular occurrence. Very occasional evening working and weekend working may be required with notice.

 

We are currently offering these roles as full time, but are happy to consider part time roles for the right people.

 

How to apply

 

To apply; please send a two-page summary addressing the skills we are after and a succinct CV to kirsty@theevaluator.co.uk by 5pm on Wednesday 18th May 2022. We may close this opportunity sooner if sufficient applications are received.  We will invite those shortlisted to an interview and this will include a task to complete.

 

We welcome applications from disabled individuals and can make reasonable adjustments to the interview process if required, please ask. We also welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds, although applicants must be located in the UK and have a right to work in the UK.

New Client; Surrey County Council

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The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, Surrey County Council. We’re working on an innovative placemaking project being delivered between a partnership lead jointly by Reigate & Banstead Borough Council and Surrey County Council to put the community at the heart of placemaking.

We are following and measuring the process and creating a capacity building report, a toolkit for others wanting to do placemaking in their locality and an animated case study to put the story of this work back into the mouths of the people taking part.

 

New Client; Ribble Rivers Trust

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The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, The Ribble Rivers Trust.

Ribble Rivers Trust is a UK based charity working to improve, protect and promote the River Ribble for both people and wildlife.  We are based in Clitheroe, an ancient market town at the heart of the Ribble Valley, and work with the public and many organisations to deliver river improvements across the entire Ribble catchment.

We are working with them to summarise a large five year project into one final evaluation. This involves categorising documentation, running statistical analysis, carrying out staff and partner interviews, designing gap analysis materials, and collating all of the information into one, visual and easy to read evaluation. 

Ribble Life Together has been running since 2016 and is a large, complex project, which worked with young people, schools, farmers, scientists, and lots of volunteers and partner organisations too. It’s a big story to tell the impact of. 

Thanks to all our 2021 Clients

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We are not going to say much about 2021, it’s been a challenging year for everyone, but huge thanks to all our 2021 clients. Working together has been one of the better parts of 2021!

NRC Approval

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We are excited to announce we just received approval from the HMPPS/ MOJ National Research Council for our research project evaluation with one of our long term clients. HMPPS stands for Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service and the MOJ is Ministry of Justice. To carry out evaluation work on Prison and Probation property requires formal approval from the NRC and it’s not a simple application process.

In fact, our client, asked us to help out because the process was so complex. We had to answer some additional questions and it did take a while to come through, but here we are. Formal approval received! 

 

Here is an extract from the letter…

 

Dear Kirsty,

 

The National Research Committee (NRC) is pleased to provide final approval for your research project. The terms and conditions below will continue to apply to your research project.

 Please note that unless the project is commissioned by MoJ/HMPPS and signed off by Ministers, the decision to grant access to prison establishments or Probation Service regions (and the offenders and practitioners within these establishments/regions) ultimately lies with the Governing Governor/Director of the establishment or the Probation Service Regional Probation Director of the region concerned. If establishments/regions are to be approached as part of the research, a copy of this letter must be attached to the request to prove that the NRC has approved the study in principle. The decision to grant access to existing data lies with the Information Asset Owners (IAOs) for each data source and the researchers should abide by the data sharing conditions stipulated by each IAO. 

Please note that a MoJ/HMPPS policy lead may wish to contact you to discuss the findings of your research. If requested, your contact details will be passed on and the policy lead will contact you directly.

Please quote your NRC reference number in all future correspondence.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Eve Schofield

National Research Committee

72 Seasons; Look Closer

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Today we publish the final report of our ground-breaking 72 Seasons project. We learned such a lot and have found a concept project which helps people to connect to nature, and which protected their wellbeing during the pandemic.

2020 was a difficult, unprecedented, traumatic year, but luckily we had a strand of good stuff to hang onto. Lots of us found solace in nature, watching the seasons unfold and nature change as expected, while everything around was not as expected certainly brought comfort. Well, we were lucky enough to be researchers measuring that comfort as it happened, with a group of incredible volunteers who inspired us and helped us to capture a moment in time.

Read all about it, here… 

New Client; Durham Wildlife Trust

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The Evaluator is delighted to work with a new partner, Durham Wildlife Trust, for their Green Recovery funded programme, Healing Nature.

Durham Wildlife Trust (their website is here) explains…

“Government funding from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund has enabled the Trust to form a Healing Nature project team, tasked with protecting and ecologically restoring important habitats, including grasslands, wetlands, and woodlands. The team includes three new full-time posts, three part-time posts and four trainees, recruited through the Kickstart programme. They will work alongside volunteers to restore the sites and create more resilient conditions for a rich variety of wildlife.

The work will include woodland management, pond restoration, grassland management, scrub clearance, and planting hedges. Healing Nature will also have a significant impact on communities, making sure residents are better connected to their local wildlife sites. This will include new paths, gates, and signage to make the sites more welcoming and easier to use.

Furthermore, the Trust will also arrange activities and events – both face to face and online – to encourage community groups, families, young people and local residents to get involved, as well as delivering educational sessions at schools.”

This is a slightly unusual evaluation, as we are working with another evaluator, Simon Lees, from Countryside Training Partnership (their website is here) who are doing the overall evaluation, and we are providing a series of quick turnabout practical feedback loops regarding the work they are doing with people. We are happy to work flexibly like this if it is what suits the client best. 

We’ll be figuring out what people are experiencing in the project activities, how its helping them connect to nature, what it is doing for wellbeing, and how they are hearing about it. Learning more about their audiences, means the trust can plan better programmes in future, and know what works, and what still needs a tweak. It’s all about making data-driven-decisions. It’s also all about people, and that’s the work that gets us excited! 

New Project with Existing Client; Jazz North

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Jazz North use the tagline, ‘enriching lives through improvisation’ and aim to make the North a leading UK talent hub for Jazz. Their website is here.

Jazz North explain

“Our goal is to build a strong, sustainable, and diverse jazz sector in the north of England by working in partnership”

and they work to support artists, promoters and build future audiences. They are a Sector Support Organisation, funded by The Arts Council and are also a founder member of Black Lives in Music. The Black Lives in Music website is here.  

The Evaluator has worked with Jazz North in the past, to evaluate their flagship programme ‘northern line’ in 2018/19 and to evaluate their ‘jazz camp for girls’ project in 2019/20. In fact we were half way through that evaluation when the pandemic began, and it was one of the first ones we completed during lockdown. 

We love building relationships and working with clients on different projects over time. It’s a key part of our business, doing such a good job that people come back to us over and over again. We are still working with 3 out of 4 of our very first clients, despite how much we have grown and changed. It’s something we are very proud of! 

Now, in 2021, we are starting a longer term partnership with Jazz North, to help them tighten up their own data processes, and to support the annual arts council data return (which is quite a lot of information that the arts council ask for on an annual basis) but more importantly, to try and get to the heart of what it is Jazz North are achieving. We are talking about true evaluation, not just monitoring, where we look at impact and change, and use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to do this. 

We’ll be figuring out who is taking part, and who isn’t, what staff and board and promoters feel could be improved, how support for artists is making a difference and much much more. We’ll be working with the team to embed this data collection work and supporting the development of a reflective culture. 

We’re hiring

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We’re hiring.

 

Post One: Project Manager Needed, Salary £37,000 FTE, 20 hours per week with potential to rise to full time in the future.

Post Two: Project Officer Needed, Salary £24,000 – £27,000 (depending on experience), Full time

 

The Evaluator is a fast-growing evaluation consultancy, founded in 2017, by Kirsty Rose Parker. Helping charities and not-for-profit organisations to demonstrate the impact of their work, creatively and visually, The Evaluator uses the tagline “We’ll figure it out for you”.

We are often ‘measuring the unmeasurable’ and fixing problems on a day- to- day basis. The tasks included in this work range from data capture, face to face consultations, telephone calls, research, analysis, report writing, visual data creation, presenting information and creative problem solving. We work at a range of levels including strategically and operationally.

Our culture is based on kindness and empathy for others with determination to provide exceptional service levels. The ideal candidate will be driven, ambitious and willing to go the extra mile to ‘figure it out’ for our clients. Read more