LKMco’s vision is of a society which ensures that all children and young people receive the support they need to make a fulfilling transition to adulthood. We work towards this by articulating our vision, inspiring people to pursue it and enabling people to achieve it.

As a social enterprise it is crucial that we ensure our work is having an impact. That’s why every year we produce social accounts as well as financial ones. This report shows how we have affected the people and organisations we interacted with. It analyses how we are doing according to the 10 outcomes we believe will move society towards our vision.

In this report we assess:

• The depth of our impact on the people we interact with.

• Which of our 10 outcomes we delivered best.

• Which of our activities achieved most impact.

How well are we doing?

Social Impact Report 2012-2013

1… new free school launched with support from LKMco

10s of… articles written for a range of newspapers

and magazines

100s of… people reading each of our newsletters

1000s of… teachers trained as part of a programme

evaluated by LKMco

10 thousand… followers on Twitter, many of whom

find our tweets “priceless”

100 thousand… students in schools that have

signed up to receive new data reports developed with support

from LKMco

1 million… students impacted on in the last year alone

by the YST programmes we are evaluating

The Year in Numbers

93% of respondents said that we had impacted on them in some way and we impacted on 41% of people in nine or more of our areas. Over 75% said that we had a “significant” or “transformative” impact on them, an increase of nearly 25 percentage points from last year. We have been producing impact reports for the last three years and are delighted that year on year the proportion of people we have a significant or transformative impact on is increasing.

Assessing the number of young people affected by our work can be difficult as we work in a variety of informal ways, ranging

from blogging to just being a critical friend. One charity felt that it was “hard to say” the number of pupils affected but added that “future pupils will be affected by the changes we will make as a result of our work with you.”

% of people impacted on % of people significantly or transformatively impacted on

Depth of Impact

“Very approachable,

knowledgeable and supportive

with understanding where we

were starting from and how to

empower our progress.”

Impact by indicator (excluding N/A)

Breadth of Impact

0 20 40 60 80 100-40 -20 0

We have exceeded our targets for the breadth of impact across our outcomes, hitting both our 30% target for significant or transformative impact and 80% total target for eight of our ten outcomes.

Last year, we had the least impact on the outcome “changing goals” as many people we worked with already shared our goals. We therefore set ourselves the target of reaching out to a wider audience. Overall, it is heartening to report that we have

made an improvement in this outcome, with 85% of people saying we have impacted on them in this area, an increase of over 10%. However, we still faced a similar issue this year, with one respondent commenting that they “already felt strongly about all these things.” Although this bodes well for society, we still need to increase the number of people who report we have a significant or transformative impact on their goals.

Combining policy insights with educational expertise

Arbor, an organisation committed to helping schools use data to target teaching and improve performance, asked for our educational

expertise when developing free data reports that were sent to over 20,000 schools in England.

Since we started work with Arbor, we have combined our on-the-ground expertise and insights into policy to contribute to a set of reports that help schools analyse their use of the pupil premium, how they narrow the gap and how they perform overall. Over 15,000

schools have accessed Arbor’s free reports, whilst 5,000 have signed up to use Arbor’s Gap and Progress reports; these will now be impacting on over 175,000 students.

“Combination of strategic

advice and being close enough

to schools to ensure a practical

deliverable that will have

impact at the user-level.”

We were pleased that Arbor reported that we “helped to craft a product by giving policy, strategic and school perspectives all at once” and felt that overall we had impacted on them significantly in eight of our ten outcomes.

What works?

How useful were the following types of support from LKMco for you? (excluding N/A)

0 20 40 60 80 100

We offer a wide variety of support, some more intangible than others. Whilst it can be hard to measure the impact of chatting over coffee or tweeting, over 90% of respondents to this question considered at least one area of support very useful and almost half considered at least one area priceless.

For fourteen out of fifteen of our activities, over 80% of respondents (excluding N/A) found our support useful and for each activity, at least 50% (excluding N/A) found our support very useful or priceless.

The number of people describing our presence on Twitter as “priceless” has grown to nearly 30%.

As with the last two years, sharing information about policy and good practice are considered the most useful although our findings on the breadth of our impact suggest that we are still not reaching out to enough people in this area.

A future target will be to share more examples with a wider range of people. One way we have started to do this is through our very popular newsletter. We will therefore aim to expand the number and range of people who receive this.

An important part of why we have so much impact is the way we work with people. In all our interactions we aim to be positive and knowledgeable, using evidence effectively to offer workable solutions. A common theme mentioned by respondents was our approachability and expertise. Many respondents also commented on our ability to work as a critical friend. As one respondent put it, we offer an approach that is “very friendly and positive yet at the same time challenging.”

“Very approachable, yet offers

a critical and insightful view on

how to improve what we do.”

Helping organisations measure their impact on young people

The Youth Sport Trust, a charity devoted to changing young people’s lives through sport, asked us to evaluate the impact of their nationwide

Matalan TOP Sport and yoUR Activity programmes. Since it began three years ago, the Matalan TOP Sport programme has impacted on over two million students across over 10,000 primary schools and the yoUR Activity programme has worked with nearly 500 Young Leaders.

Using our expertise in designing mixed methods evaluations, we conducted a rigorous review of the impact of the primary and secondary programmes. The findings of these reports will help the YST shape future projects, ensuring that they meet their aim of helping all young people to achieve their full potential in life by delivering high quality physical education and sport opportunities.

“LKMco have helped me to

realise the importance of

critical evidence to help shape

future work.”

We were pleased that the YST appreciated our “no nonsense approach to research, and willingness to work with the commissioners to shape the work above and beyond initial thoughts.”

Organisations such as the YST are increasingly turning to us to provide independent evaluations of impact in order to improve the support they offer young people, to secure external funding and to critically appraise whether they are meeting their aims. As a result of our evaluation, we have already helped the YST “retain current funding” to continue their invaluable work. Another youth organisation explained that during a similar project we developed a “framework of outcomes to help measure our impact in supporting young people to transition successfully to adulthood.”

We sent our impact survey to all the clients we had worked with in 2012 to 2013 and promoted it via twitter, Facebook, email and blogs. We received 44 responses.

Respondents primarily came from the education and charity/social enterprise sectors. They included policy makers, teachers and academics. They came from primary, secondary and higher education phases. 36% were paying clients.

The survey

“Invaluable source of advice

and information.”

“Positive and thought

provoking impact.”

“Provided well facilitated

workshop to help us identify

outcomes, then offered

rigorous research to underpin

the outcomes we identified.”

Research and Policy

We recognise that it can be challenging to keep up to date with policy research so we aim to help others to do so by writing blogs and tweets that engage constructively with research and policy and which share information about good practice. We had overwhelming feedback this year on how helpful people find our online presence: nearly 75% of respondents considered blogs and tweets very useful or priceless (excluding N/A).

Respondents feel that we are “well informed” and willing to “express opinions” based on our grounded understanding of education.

Respondents also commented that our online presence had helped foster “significant reflection on policy debates,” and that we are a resource they find “invaluable in keeping up to date.”

“Approachability. Tweet and

you get a reply. This helps in

exchange of ideas and leads

to linking up with others.”

“Shared the blog on pupil

progress data/attainment

with fellow governors. It

has informed my thinking

on how to tackle the

presentation of data.”

• 3FF (Three Faiths Forum)• St. George’s R.C School• The Joseph Rowntree Foundation• Optimus Education• Arbor• Artisans Kindergarten• Teach First

• Leap Confronting Conflict• Edapt• The Youth Sport Trust• Action Tutoring• The Inspiration Trust• City Gateway

Our 2012-13 Clients

“Significant reflection on policy

debates through tweet/blog

inputs.”

“Honesty, humour and

integrity.”

www.lkmco.org @lkmco 07793 370459 info@lkmco.org ©2014

“Enabled us to think more

strategically and critically

about our evaluation processes,

hopefully making us stronger

for the future.”

You interacted with us informally/socially

You read something we wrote/tweeted etc.

You or your organistation received pro-bonoor informalsupport/advice

You or your organisation were a paying client

We sent our impact survey to all the

We received 43 responses. Respondents primarily came from the and charity/social enterprise sectors. They also included policy makers,

journalists and academics. They came from primary, secondary and higher

phases.

Thank You!Clients

The survey

asked LKMco to help develop

which aimed to boost 100,000 NEET

young people’s

a volunteering

program

to suit all skill levels and interests as

We then took on the interim

management

which involved a partnership of six

.

ability

to work with the corporate and

charitable sectors and to apply to

the youth sector.