As a strategic grant maker that aims to influence change through each of our funding activities, we think it is important to evaluate the impact of our work.
To this end we have commissioned Geoffrey Randall and Susan Brown of Research Information Services to carry out an in-depth evaluation of the London Housing Foundation’s Private Rented Sector (PRS) programme.
It will focus on the impact of the
PRS grants programme, in particular at how effective the pilot or ‘demonstration’ projects run by
Broadway,
OSW and Threshold have been in proving new methodologies/approaches to resettling homeless people.
Analysis of the Foundation’s PRS grants programme is central to the evaluation, because these pilots have the potential to evidence transferable and scaleable new approaches. Evaluation of (the reasons for) success and failure will be key. Doing so contemporaneously gives it two important added dimensions, in that it can act as a useful external ‘check and balance’ on the pilots, and it will also be able to assist the Foundation and each of the lead agencies to work on developing and mainstreaming the projects.
The evaluation will also assess the extent to which the wider objectives of the Foundation’s
PRS strategy are achieved – for instance in terms of influencing both the development of other initiatives and the policy and funding environment.