Impact Evaluation of Stewardship’s Covid-19 Rapid Response Fund
On the 27th March 2020, the Chief Executive of Stewardship (Stewart McCulloch) hosted a video call with charity leaders and donors to highlight the large gaps in Covid-19 related support for Christian charities. As a result of this initial call, and subsequent appeal to other major donors, Stewardship raised £3.8 million for distribution through the Rapid Response Fund (RRF).
The goal of this fund was to help churches or gospel inspired charities. A total number of 101 grants, of between £1,800 and £250,000, were made to 95 organisations in several waves of funding. The final grants awarded were below the original limit to allow for a wider impact on smaller charities that needed funding. In addition to these financial grants, the RRF also offered additional non-financial support in the form of technical and digital consultancy, impact strategy consultancy, and personal mentoring through the process.
In addition to the £3.8 million donated directly to the RRF, match funding generated an additional £923k and individual donors were prompted to give a further £452k via Stewardship grants to charities. There were also international charities that fell outside the criteria for the RRF but individual donors generously gave £196k through Stewardship grants following discussions with the Philanthropy Services Team. This brought the total financial impact of the fund to £5.37 million.
The purposes of this report are to:
Provide accountability to the fund’s donors.
Discover and demonstrate the impact of radical Christian generosity to organisations and society.
Improve the impact of future rapid response funds.
The key evaluation questions were:
What has been the impact of the RRF upon the leaders of the recipient organisations?
What has been the impact of the RRF upon the volunteers / staff of the recipient organisations?
What has been the financial impact of the RRF upon the recipient organisations?
What has been the impact of the RRF upon the programmes of the recipient organisations?
What has been the high-level impact of the RRF upon the beneficiaries of the programmes?
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