Evaluation of the Mayor’s Fund

The Mayor’s Fund for London was set up in 2008 with the aim of helping children, young people and their families in London get out of poverty. The fund’s philosophy is that the way out of poverty is a decent job – so its approach centres on boosting young people’s employment prospects.

At the time the fund was set up, a consultation carried out found that charitable funding was often not as useful as it could be because of the way it was given. The Mayor’s Fund wanted to give more than just funding, and decided to fund according to four principles: encouraging high quality implementation; using evidence to make decisions; creating partnerships with all kinds of stakeholders; and connecting organisations to provide a better service.

The Mayor’s Fund model is to identify a need, select or design an intervention to meet that need, and then choose a delivery partner to deliver the intervention. This means that it is very involved with its projects.

The Mayor’s Fund commissioned NPC to carry out an independent evaluation of its work, which researches how well these principles have been put into place, what added value is created by The Mayor’s Fund, and the degree to which that is due to its principles. In the course of our research we interviewed staff, delivery partners and stakeholders associated with the fund, conducted a literature review, and performed an economic analysis of the outcomes of the fund.

The resulting evaluation is published in summary on The Mayor’s Fund website, and in full here.

 The Mayor’s Fund model is to identify a need, select or design an intervention to meet that need, and then choose a delivery partner to deliver the intervention. This means that it is very involved with its projects.

Angela Kail, report author

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