Last year, we received over a thousand applications and reports from organisations across the UK.
They described people leaving prison with no address, young people leaving care and losing support overnight, and families facing eviction after a delayed housing benefit payment. Most of that insight stays with us.
NPC recently published Opening up impact: Why open knowledge is essential for systems change. It argues that if systems are to improve, knowledge cannot sit on one organisation’s server.
We agree. But the way our sector is designed means knowledge is often used to secure the next grant, not to strengthen the wider system.
When knowledge stays private
Over the past two decades, impact organisations have developed theories of change, measurement frameworks, evaluations and dashboards to track their work. The report maps this as a cycle of planning, delivery, assessment and review. Most of that knowledge stays in internal reports, shared drives and board papers. It sharpens one service and informs one funding decision, but it rarely changes the wider system. NPC describes this as “a huge array of stranded assets”. Insight exists. But it does not circulate.
This is not because charities are unwilling to share. The report argues that funding and reporting requirements often ask organisations to prove their individual impact. In a context of scarce resources, organisations use learning to secure their next grant. The result is that learning is used to demonstrate effectiveness, not to build a shared evidence base. That design made sense when impact was framed at the level of single organisations. It makes less sense if the goal is systems change. With that ambition, learning cannot remain private.
Because we fund across issues and regions, we’re close to information that could reveal patterns across the system. We read detailed accounts of what happens at key transition points.We see support break down when responsibility passes between teams. We see housing secured in time and we see it lost. We see income stabilised early and we see crises escalate when it is not. If insight sits in our files without being analysed or shared, we reinforce the same incentives the report criticises. As the report puts it, “we need our knowledge to be shared as a collective good”.
Backing change where systems fail
Our strategy focuses on moments when housing, welfare, justice and health services struggle to respond. By funding organisations at those pressure points, we see how these services interact in practice, not in policy documents. We see where handovers fail, where incentives clash and where support arrives too late. Few organisations are close enough to this work to see how these services intersect in the same person’s life. If that view stays private, it cannot shape policy or funding decisions beyond us.
The report argues that openness “is essential… to achieve any systemic goals”. If housing, justice and welfare teams are to pass responsibility without gaps, they need access to the same evidence.
Staying close to this work gives us access to the information that could reveal patterns – repeated gaps, missed handovers, funding that ends before someone is ready, and support that arrives after harm has built. That is why we need to share what we see. If we want systems to improve, insight cannot remain in our files.
The report describes two kinds of openness – publishing what you know, and inviting others to shape it. Publishing what you know opens your evidence to scrutiny. Inviting others to shape it means accepting challenge as well as endorsement.
From intention to practice
We are at an early stage. We are improving how we log themes, patterns and outcomes across grants, and setting clear rules about when and how insight is shared.
Over time, we aim to share more than grant decisions. That may include themes emerging across funding, reflections on approaches that fell short, and work with others to understand where support breaks down. Not every lesson is comfortable, but if we share selectively to protect our reputation, it is not openness.
Strengthening the system
Two organisations can tackle the same gap in different towns without ever seeing each other’s evaluation. A repeated failure in how services transfer responsibility can be recorded in separate reports and never connected. An approach that reduces eviction in one area can remain local knowledge. In each case, the system learns more slowly than it needs to. The same mistakes are repeated. The same breakthroughs are rediscovered.
When findings are shared, funders can avoid backing the same pilot twice and policymakers can act earlier. Patterns surface earlier, before harm escalates. People facing some of life’s hardest moments may receive support that holds, not support that arrives too late.
We have worked to collaborate more closely and focused on moments when systems fail. A stronger commitment to shared learning follows from that. NPC’s report challenges the sector and reinforces the direction we are taking.
Each year we receive thousands of pages of frontline insight. Over time, more of it should shape funding decisions, service design and policy, rather than sit unused on our server while the same failures repeat.