Evaluating the Building Connections Fund

In 2018, we were asked to lead the learning and evaluation partnership for the Building Connections Fund, an £11.5 million joint initiative by the government, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-Op Foundation to reduce loneliness.

We are gathering evidence together to improve the evidence base on loneliness, which will be used to inform longer term policy and funding decisions. Our partnership will support grant holders with evaluation through a programme of online guidance, workshops, and tailored assistance.

We are undertaking a Developmental Evaluation of the grant-holders post-Covid 19 response to learn from the current situation and capture emerging findings. This includes:

• Supporting grant-holders and the wider sector to learn from the data collected and improve their service provision.
• Working closely with a small group of grant holders in a focused and supportive way to understand what they are doing, how they have adapted and what they have been working on to reduce or prevent loneliness.

The results of our evaluation will be published in autumn 2021. In the meantime we’re publishing some of what we’ve learnt from doing this work, including tips to help you run a remote project, reflections on running a developmental evaluation, and guidance on measuring loneliness.

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