Need support with gathering evidence or demonstrating your impact?
Whether you want to understand the needs of your community, show the difference your work is making, or use your data to learn and grow, we’re here to help.
What we provide:
Let us help you build the confidence, tools and evidence you need to make informed decisions and demonstrate your impact.
Need help navigating this? Contact Natasha nsimons@interlinkrct.org.uk
Get in Touch today! Contact Natasha: nsimons@interlinkrct.org.uk
“The training provided knowledge on how to design a useful evaluation form and explanations of a logic model. It was easy to understand and all the hints and tips like the sample size calculator were really useful!” – Attendee, Getting Started with Evaluation Training.
“Helpful to know how to plan monitoring and use the correct questions to gain information for reporting” – Attendee, Getting Started with Evaluation Training.
“The training will prove invaluable when we are gathering information for grant purposes and also to pinpoint what are clients are looking for. It provided important tips on how to gather evaluation evidence and how to collate it” – Attendee, Getting Started with Evaluation Training.
We work in collaboration with academics, Local Authority and the sector to ensure that research is co-designed and well-placed to explore and examine community needs and priorities.
We connect academics with relevant organisations and partner with the sector to develop research questions that are impactful, relevant, and capable of driving positive change.
We are working with The Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) part of Rhondda Cynon Taf Council to ensure that the voices of the local communities are represented and contribute to the range of evidences that will drive change in council services leading to healthier and more resilient communities.
We are working in partnership with the HDRC to help community and voluntary groups to integrate the Evidence Pie as a model of best practice to provide the best services to their communities. We also work with community and voluntary groups to understand areas of research that are emerge from grass-roots work and seek to secure funding for academic studies to explore these.
We are currently working with academics from Cardiff University who are researching:
We work with academics and other partners to understand the state of the Sector, including its successes and challenges. We use this information to work to inform policies and funding aimed at the sector, including influencing Welsh Government, Local Government and funders.
Make sure RCT is represented by getting involved!
We currently support two national surveys:
The Barometer survey is a quick ‘temperature check’ of what’s happening in the VCSE sector right now. The Survey builds insight into real-time trends, changes and challenges in the UK voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. Findings are shared every quarter with national policy and decision-makers, local infrastructure organisations and the VCSE sector.
Participating Community and voluntary groups are given access to their own interactive dashboard to compare their organisaiton with others. Get Involved Now! You don’t want to miss this one!
This is the largest survey of third sector groups in the UK. Initiated in 2008 by Northern Rock Foundation it is a longitudinal study to explore the structure and dynamics of the sector in the context of change. The study now covers the whole of England and Wales and is commissioned every three years.
Do you want to join our research team? This will link you to research opportunities (with our HDRC partners) and work alongside you to help shape and develop your own research ideas. We can also link you to academics who are experts in your area of interest (i.e. neurodiversity or unpaid carers) to help grow your knowledge.
You will also be invited to complete relevant surveys about the sector.
Want to do your own research? Check out some free research resources here.
Join our research team now!
To find out more contact: nsimons@interlink.org.uk
New Life Community Church runs a successful Breakfast Hub in Tonyrefail, supporting people in need. They required a more efficient way to monitor and record attendance and the number of breakfasts served, as their existing paper-based system was time-consuming. In addition, they wanted to better evidence the wider impact the Breakfast Hub was having on its users.
We worked with New Life Church to develop a tailored monitoring spreadsheet, helping to avoid double-counting and enabling clear tracking of attendance on a daily, monthly, and annual basis.
We facilitated a stakeholder meeting with Breakfast Hub users to identify the key outcomes of attending. The main benefits highlighted were improved wellbeing, stronger social connections, a greater sense of belonging, and increased confidence.
Building on this, we designed an evaluation form aligned with these outcomes, allowing New Life Church to effectively evidence its impact. We recommended adopting a case study approach to capture richer insights into both the short- and long-term impact of their work.
New Life Community Church are now able to effectively monitor their breakfast hubs and evaluate their short-term outcomes and impacts