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SNAPSHOT SURVEY 1
20th October 2016
This bulletin presents the findings from the first LSF snapshot survey which explored grant
holders experiences of project start up, the biggest challenges they have faced and their
reflections on the Online Diagnostic Tool (ODT). This information is just for grant holders and their
partners at the moment and shouldnt be published elsewhere.
Many thanks to all 67% of grant holders who responded to the survey your participation is
greatly appreciated and this gives us a high level of confidence that these findings are accurate.
This bulletin offers a brief summary of what we think are the key findings.
We hope that it is useful for you to compare your experience to the experience of grant holders
generally and we would also greatly value your input in interpreting the findings and drawing out
what you have found interesting or surprising. We are holding a webchat with grant holders for this
purpose on the 8th November between 12.30-1.30, which will focus on thinking through the most
important challenges that grant holders have identified in the survey. You can find out more about
joining the webchat on the learning network events page.
Chart 1: How satisfied are you with your organisations experience of the following
aspects of the LSF programme so far? (%)
Very satisfied Quite satisfied Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied Quite dissatisfied Very dissatisfied
The most important challenges so far
In the open response questions, grant holders identified a number of key challenges that they
have faced in the first few months of their LSF project. The top four most important challenges
were:
For one grant holder delays in payment have meant that our start date clashed with the start
dates of two new projects and this has led to further delays. Every delay has significant impacts
and knock-on effects for other areas of work and capacity and for another delays in payment of
the funding, meant that we had a significant challenge in recruiting and employing [a Manager] to
take the LSF project forward. Whilst we had interviewed for the post and identified the most
appropriate candidate we were unable to give them a formal job offer as we had not received
notification that funds had been received.
As one said none of us have the luxury of spare time and we have had to run this scheme
alongside the normal day to day demands of the operational aspects of the work. We recognise
how worthwhile it is and have given it priority, but the result has been many additional hours
worked above our normal week and another acknowledged that once we really got into the
project, it became apparent how much more work there is to do if we want to get it right and more
capacity needs building in than we originally thought which has been challenging.
Interestingly, despite the delays in the receipt of funds, the majority of grant holders (60%) started
their LSF project before they had received funding in June and most are sticking with the 12 month
project span.
Others had faced challenges in establishing shared goals and setting clear objectives that will
benefit the organisation. For one, their most important challenge was that the advisor was simply
providing us with reports etc. rather than something more hands on that can really help us when
we have so few staff to take their recommendations forward. Another found that shifting the mind
set of consultants to move away from them giving us what they think we are asking for - and often
just giving us back some of the story that we would have provided them with at the initial meeting -
to them actually using their expertise and knowledge to 'teach' us something new, innovative,
experimental, novel.
One argued that because the LSF is not a traditional 'project', the main challenge has been to
galvanise the SMT around the opportunity and to take shared and collective ownership of the
project and another felt that the single most important challenge was the staff accepting the
introduction of the consultants to review, provide training and enable [us] to become contract
ready. Partly, these challenges were related to broader difficulties of enacting change within
organisations as one felt their most important challenge was convincing staff and trustees to work
in a new and different way.
Very accurate Quite accurate Neither accurate nor inaccurate Quite inaccurate Very inaccurate
Fifty-one percent of grant holders found the overall ODT process and results very useful (NB:
dont knows have been removed). In particular, grant holders found the process of thinking
through the questions posed by the ODT (69%) and informing the development of your LSF
application (66%) very useful. Grant holders found the ODT as less useful at telling them things
that they didnt already know (27% found this element of the ODT not very useful or not at all
useful). These results generally supports assumption 1 in the LSF Theory of Change, which
assumes that the ODT provided a valid assessment of an organisation.
Chart 3: How useful were the following aspects of the ODT for your organisation? (%)
Very useful Somewhat useful Not very useful Not at all useful
Overall, 90% of grant holders would recommend the ODT to other organisations to use (only 3%
wouldnt recommend it). As such, the vast majority of open responses around the ODT related to
its strengths. In particular, grant holders gave the following key strengths:
o The clarity of quantification and prioritisation of different aspects of the organisation;
o As a measure of sustainability;
o As a reflective process;
o The ODT provided a challenge to the organisation / a different perspective on the
organisation.
Grant holders (including those who were positive overall) identified a number of key weaknesses
to the ODT including disagreement with specific findings or feeling that the questions didnt get to
the heart of sustainability, feeling quantification was too crude for some areas (although this may
be a symptom of a broader scepticism about the ability of any ODT to quantity different elements
of an organisations operations) and the seeing the ODT as being a useful moment in time
process but not functioning as a living document that informs organisational behaviour on an
ongoing basis.