Comic Relief
Comic Relief, a major UK charity that uses the power of comedy and entertainment to raise millions for initiatives tackling poverty, injustice, and climate change, launched its Change Makers programme in 2021 and awarded £9.1 million to 20 organisations across the UK. Funded organisations aim to address deep-rooted social issues which saw an increased demand throughout the pandemic, including racial inequality, homelessness, early childhood development, forced migration, domestic abuse, and mental health.
The challenge
A dedicated collective learning partnership formed of funded partners, with NPC appointed to lead as the Learning Coordinator. The learning platform combines both peer and collective learning opportunities for funded organisations with technical Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) support. This blogpost highlights the tailored, one‑to‑one MEL support we offered to Women’s Budget Group and Bradford and Craven Autism AIM, centred on articulating intended impact, as well as evidence gathering to support internal learning and communicating impacts achieved.
The approach
Supporting the UK Women’s Budget Group
The UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG) is a leading feminist economics think tank that aims to advance gender equality in policymaking. After an initial scoping call, we agreed to focus on supporting WBG in strengthening how they gather and use data to demonstrate impact and refine their delivery approach.
We delivered training sessions on two central areas of WBG’s work:
- Influencing stakeholders, and;
- Training mission‑aligned organisations.
Using WBG’s existing theory of change, we identified priority areas for data collection, covering short-term outcomes, long-term impact, and underlying assumptions. Drawing on NPC’s five types of data framework, we identified indicators suitable for evaluating complex systems‑change initiatives and explored how these insights could inform future improvements to their theory of change using our 10-step framework. We also ran a bespoke session with members of their Training and Learning team to help them sharpen indicators of success and clarify learning aims.
Supporting Bradford and Craven Autism AIM, part of The Advonet Group
Bradford and Craven Autism AIM is a free advocacy and support service for autistic adults across Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale, and Craven, run by The Advonet Group in Leeds. In our first meeting, we agreed to deliver two impact‑focused training sessions – one foundational and one more practical – built around NPC’s four‑step plan-do-assess-review cycle.
The first session supported the team to articulate their intended impact through a clear theory of change, and to map how their existing data aligned with the five types of data, helping reveal gaps and opportunities in data collection. The second session focused on practical data‑collection methods – surveys, interviews, focus groups, case studies – and on how to communicate impact in a clear, accessible way.
The results
For the Training and Learning team, the main result is to rethink the whole MEL process and use the templates [NPC] provided. The discussion is still ongoing, but the way we collect data (more regularly, different format), definitely changed.
Samah Krichah
Head of Training and Learning, UK Women's Budget Group
NPC's guidance helped us to map out our theory of change, which proved invaluable to the big picture planning of our project, setting out measurements that reflect the impact and goals to have the widest positive impact for autistic people while meeting project need and supporting the final evaluation process. John's guidance was thoughtful, creative and patient. He took time to explain new concepts with care and accessibility. We would recommend working with NPC for MEL learning and support.
Georgia Holden-Burnett
Deputy Manager, Autism AIM Mental Health Equity Project
