Making a difference

Increasingly, funders are asking voluntary and community organisations to demonstrate that they are delivering high quality services, and that those services are making a difference in the lives of service users.

York CVS can support you in proving the quality of your work through:

Quality assurance frameworks

Our Volunteer Centre is a registered ‘partner organisation’ for Investors in Volunteers, and can support your organisation in achieving this quality standard

The Volunteer Centre is also an accredited Excellence in Volunteer Management trainer

During 2009, York CVS will introduce mentoring support for organisations wanting to work towards the ‘PQASSO’ standard for voluntary organisations

Development workers can provide information and advice about the many different quality assurance frameworks available, and help you understand which may be relevant to your work.

Outcomes and Evaluation

Many voluntary sector organisations are familiar with describing what they do and who they work with. But you also need to describe the changes, benefits, learning or other effects that happen as a result of your work. These are your outcomes.

Information on your outcomes can help you make your work more effective, by helping you identify what works well and what you might change or improve. This will help you use your limited resources most efficiently to meet your users’ needs.

Charities Evaluation Services is the UK's leading provider of support on quality and evaluation systems for the voluntary sector. York CVS is able to provide CES training on implementing an outcomes focus in your own organisation, and help you develop a monitoring framework that will provide relevant and useful information about your outcomes.

For details of the next course, see our training programme. 

Useful link: Charities Evaluation Service: http://www.ces-vol.org.uk/