Why funders must rethink impact for long-term social change

In a world where urgency often drives investment decisions, it’s understandable that funders look for quick, quantifiable results that can be reported and scaled efficiently.

This means a focus on metrics like ‘number of sessions delivered’, ‘participants engaged’, ‘resources distributed’, ‘surveys completed’, or ‘events held’ are easy to track and communicate. While these indicators provide a surface-level picture of activity, they rarely capture the lasting change that many social interventions aim to achieve.

I believe that it’s time for a new funding mindset. One that is built on prioritising long-term outcomes, investing in relationships, supporting contextual complexity, and valuing stories alongside data.

The Case for Long-Term, Preventative Investment

There is a growing disconnect between how meaningful change unfolds within communities and how funding models are currently designed. Today’s most persistent social issues – from poverty and family breakdown to educational disparities and mental health challenges – are deeply rooted and generational. They demand sustained, relationship-based, community-led responses. Yet, most funding remains short-term, transactional and geared toward immediate outcomes.

Evidence continues to underscore the shortcomings of this model. For example, a recent Nesta report calls for a shift away from short-lived, project-based grants toward longer-term, adaptive partnerships that allows deeper impact to take root.

Addressing complex problems like family breakdown or social isolation involves more than time-limited interventions or isolated service offerings. It requires early, preventive support that builds trust, strengthens relationships, and fosters resilience over time. For example, early intervention in families can reduce key risk factors such as parental conflict, mental health issues, low parenting confidence and competence, and disconnection from community. When families receive this support, the ripple effects are significant: children are more likely to feel secure, succeed in school, form healthy relationships, and contribute positively to society as they grow.

However, standard evaluation frameworks and output-driven funding models often focus on what’s easiest to count – numbers of participants, sessions, or short-term behavioural changes. This emphasis can distort priorities, encouraging performative activities over meaningful, lasting change. As a result, subtler yet vital outcomes – such as empowered caregivers, stronger local networks and long-term shifts in wellbeing, behaviour and educational success – are routinely overlooked or undervalued.

When measurement overshadows mission, impact risks being reduced to a checklist rather than recognised as a gradual, transformative process. True change often unfolds quietly – in stronger relationships, resilient families, and connected communities. These are the outcomes that matter most, and they require funders to think beyond the next quarterly report.

A Call for a New Funding Mindset

To enable generational influence, we need a new kind of investment – one that prioritises depth over speed, and people over processes. Funders play a crucial role in enabling this shift. By reimagining how impact is defined and measured, they can help unlock lasting and inclusive change.

This means:

• Prioritising Long-Term Outcomes: Focus on deep, sustained change rather than short-term outputs.
• Investing in Relationships: Build trust-based partnerships with organisations embedded in their communities, not just deliverers of services.
• Supporting Contextual Complexity: Recognise that change in under-resourced communities takes time, and that slower progress does not mean failure.
• Valuing Stories Alongside Data: Quantitative indicators matter, but they should be complemented by lived experience, community insight and narrative evidence.

Looking Ahead

Social change may be complex and gradual, but it is absolutely achievable. By moving beyond the pressure for instant results and committing to long-term relationships, funders can help create a context where lasting progress takes hold.

Quick wins may bring short-term visibility, but it’s the slower, more intentional work that breaks cycles of disadvantage and strengthens relationships and transforms lives over time. When funding models reflect the true nature of generational change, the potential for meaningful impact grows exponentially.

To find out more about Kids Matter and our parenting programmes, visit our website Kidsmatter.org.uk.