Sanctuary’s mission is to build affordable homes and sustainable communities where people choose to live. Through their Sustainable Communities programme, Sanctuary’s community investment team has been making a shift towards more place-based systems change ways of working, grounded in the principles of asset-based community development.
The community investment team recognised that while they had developed a place-based programme they were proud of, there was a need to shift the ways they were evidencing change: from more traditional models of impact and value measurement to one more grounded in asset-based community development principles. They partnered with Renaisi-TSIP (then Renaisi), to move towards this goal.
Over the course of the partnership, Renaisi worked alongside the Sanctuary team, their voluntary and community sector partners and some residents to:
- Co-design definitions of community connection and community resilience. Ideas that are central to the programme.
- Develop a theory of change that reflects the asset-based values of the programme.
- Analyse and critique existing evaluation frameworks and approaches through a place-based systems change lens.
- Tie the outcomes of the programme back to the UN Sustainable Development Goals that Sanctuary has committed to advancing.
- Develop approaches that centre learning and community storytelling – including through piloting a community research model – to better reflect the programme’s values and new theory of change.
- Validate the programme as an example of effective place-based systems change practice.
“For over a decade, we’ve been refining our approach to community development and investment. It was important to introduce an external review of our work and evaluation through a place-based systems change lens.
Renaisi’s expertise and perspective proved invaluable, offering fresh discovery, constructive challenge, and a reassuring endorsement that our approach is delivering significant social impact. Importantly, it highlighted the need to evolve our evaluation methods so we can better demonstrate impact at a place level.”
– Marie-Claire Wattison, Head of Community Investment
Read the Executive Summary below to learn more about our findings, and how we collaboratively re-envisioned the evaluation approach for Sanctuary’s Sustainable Communities programme.
