Ripple Effect Mapping is a hugely useful and flexible evaluation tool for those working in communities and change-making, dealing with trying to make change on social issues where benefits aren’t always immediate, obvious or tangible. As part of our recent work with Bristol City Council on the evaluation of their Community Resilience Fund, People’s Voice Media led four Ripple Effect Mapping sessions with people representing community organisations that had received grant funding for capital projects. In this blog, Lauren Wallace-Thompson, our Communications and Community Engagement Manager, gives our top 6 reasons that we love to employ this tool to support partners, communities and clients with evaluation and learning.

Does it seem a little OTT to have a favourite evaluation tool? I’ve been a researcher for over 15 years now, and to be honest, the word “methodologies” still kind of brings me out in a cold sweat. At People’s Voice Media, we spend a lot of time bigging up the importance of “qualitative” data (that is, data other than pure numbers – which could be words, feelings, pictures, videos). We collect lots of stories from individuals via our Community Reporting method, and use these to create datasets of people’s experiences in their own words. Sometimes however, we want to “zoom out” slightly, and look at the bigger picture. Where we are trying to create change in a community, a system, an organisation or on a social issue, we need a way to capture all the various ways in which an intervention has an impact.

Enter, stage right, waving a flipchart marker pen: Ripple Effect Mapping. It’s a people-powered, flexible tool for discovering what has changed. It has lots of great features, and you can find out a bit more about how the process works on our previous blog. It involves getting people together in a room with a giant sheet of paper and some marker pens, and really thinking through all the changes that have happened. In the case of the Bristol City Council work, the “intervention” was funding for capital improvements awarded to 56 community organisations or projects. But it could be anything – the results of a campaign, a change in policy, a training programme, a social action, a charitable act.

Here are 6 things that we love about using Ripple Effect Mapping for evaluation:

1. It’s collaborative

Ripple Effect Mapping is always most powerful when undertaken in groups to make the most of the “hive mind”, and to gather perspectives from different parts of an organisation. You can bring in views and ideas from senior management, volunteers, beneficiaries, trustees, project coordinators, local residents and more. Different people will have experienced the changes in different ways, and observed things others haven’t. It really makes the most of collective knowledge.

2. It gives over power to the people who understand best

Ripple Effect Mapping hands over the identification of impact to the people with the real expertise. Can an external evaluator judge exactly what changes have occurred? Can they notice subtle and unintended consequences (especially that go beyond those stated on the initial project brief, for example)? Well, maybe. But probably not as much as someone who has been embedded in the organisation, or lives in the community, and has witnessed the change first-hand.

3. It’s flexible

Sometimes evaluation markers can be set from the outset of a project – and they remain fixed. Which means that other things that change might be overlooked.

Ripple Effect Mapping starts with a blank sheet of paper, which means there’s no parameters on what can be recorded and tracked.

For this reason, we always say that it’s good for tracking:

• both postive and negative outcomes
• expected and unexpected consequences
• intentional and unintended results
• direct impacts, and others that are more tangential
• changes that have already occurred, and things that are now in progress for the future

4. It’s genuinely joyful

Of all the different sessions I deliver when facilitating with People’s Voice Media, it’s Ripple Effect Mapping sessions that I look forward to the most. For lots of organisations or community groups, it’s the first time they’ve ever stepped back and put down all their achievements and successes down on paper, and they are often both surprised and proud (rightly so!) at the impact of their work. We do always make sure as facilitators that the group spends some time considering any downsides, challenges or misfires that have occurred, but overwhelmingly these sessions are full of positivity and celebration.

5. It tells a story

A key part of our Ripple Effect Mapping sessions is where we ask participants to talk us through their maps. This really gives people the chance to process all that they’ve discovered into a narrative that shows a journey of change, improvement and learning. This in itself can be a really powerful moment for a community or organisation, where they recognise their own capacity to create change. And you know how fond of a story we are here at People’s Voice Media!

6. It can be longitudinal

Or perhaps we should make that, it should be longitudinal. With many projects, interventions or changes, it can take a long time to see the full picture of the real world impacts that are created. The old “Rome wasn’t built in a day” cliche holds especially true when you’re dealing with complex social issues or within rigid systems where change can be slow.

Ripple Effect Mapping is really useful for tracking change over time, and supporting continuous learning and improvement. We often recommend that groups repeat the Ripple Effect Mapping process at intervals both during and after a project (say every six or 12 months), or after key milestones are achieved. A snapshot immediately after a project finishes might not give enough time for the impact “ripples” to have worked through and spread out, so try doing a Ripple Effect Map again 6 months down the line, and compare the two to get a fuller picture of those longer-term impacts and changes.

“This approach to evaluation was an exciting venture for us. It has allowed us to be creative and highlight the real life impacts of our work – we often get stuck behind figures, so it’s been fantastic to bring the fund’s impacts to life. We’re already, as a team, using the REM tool in other areas of work, so this project has given us all some professional skills!” – Bristol City Council Community Development Team

And one thing we don’t love so much…

It’s messy. Oh, it’s messy. Getting the sprawling thoughts of a group of people down on paper in a limited amount of time can mean that some of those maps look like a toddler has been let loose with the felt tips. That’s okay, though – it’s all part of the process and we’re here to help hold you in the chaos. That’s why it is really helpful to have someone external to come in and facilitate the process, adding in some structure and ensuring there is time for interpretation and explanation, and then working to extract and analyse the data from the maps into useful learning and action.

If you would like People’s Voice Media to design and facilitate a Ripple Effect Mapping process to support your organisation with its learning and evaluation, please get in touch. Just email enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk or leave us a comment below!

In Doncaster, we have been working with the Council and representatives from community interest companies to deliver Community Reporter training and gather stories themed on people’s experiences of cancer. The goal is to use what people have shared in these stories to make improvements to how people impacted by cancer are cared for.

The training was delivered in the form of in-person workshops and people learned Community Reporter Skills including:

• Storytelling Techniques: The different ways we can support people to tell their lived experience stories
• Responsible Practice: How to look after ourselves and others whilst gathering and sharing stories
• Digital Skills: How technology can be used to record and share lived experience stories
• Sense Making: The value of lived experience stories and how they can be used to create change

So far Community Reporters have collected 21 lived experience stories in the form of photographs, written pieces of text, video interviews, monologues and audio recordings. From first-hand accounts, to stories of people caring for friends, family and loved ones facing cancer, the 2 hours of footage explores screening, diagnosis, referrals, treatment, recovery, living life with cancer and more.

We are creating a short film, using clips from each of the stories, which will be screened at the Conversation of Change event that is set to take place in the coming months. The event will be a chance for people to watch the film, hear insights from the stories and discuss what’s working well and what needs to change when it comes to providing care for people impacted by cancer in Doncaster. The plan is to invite decision makers and people who can influence change to hear the stories and discuss how best they can support progress in cancer care.

Key themes that have emerged from the stories so far and will be explored during the COC include the following:

• Early Intervention
• Communication between professionals
• Health advocacy
• The human experience

If you’re interested in knowing more about the Conversation of Change event, please get in touch for more info: georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

If you’d like to hear the stories in full, head over to the Community Reporter website by following the link: Well Doncaster | Community Reporter Network

If you or someone you know has been impacted by cancer, and you are looking for support – here as some organisations that could help:

• Firefly: Charity offering free transport to local cancer patients and their families in the borough of Doncaster to regional treatment hospitals.
• Cancer Support UK: Information about useful and relevant charities/bodies who offer help and support to people affected by a cancer diagnosis.
• Macmillan: Find out how Macmillan can support you and get information about different cancer types.

A huge thank you goes out to the Community Reporters and storytellers who have gathered and shared their stories with us as part of this project.

As some of our Community Reporter Network members will know, we host regular Community Reporter Catch-Ups where we share practice, news about our projects, and hear about what people across our network are up to. December’s meet-up was extra special as we were joined by a group of Community Researchers from the University of Reading, who have been working on a project about food, community and equality. They showed us the new handbook they’ve written together, which is a guide to becoming a Community Researcher. In this blog, Community Researcher Vandy Butcher shares her experiences of working as a Community Researcher and on putting together the guidebook.

How to become a Community Researcher – this book is a guideline we’ve created to help you decide if this is what you want to do, in a fun way! As I was put in the deep end and did not know what I was getting into, I hope it can be useful for you.

This book is about people who care about the community.

People in the community want change in all sorts of ways. Being a community researcher, what we do is to help get evidence and to share advice and to support the community. It’s not just about food, but what we found out will open up ideas on how to manage food better, maybe to make changes in your life.

We also looked at the policy in the food industry, how things are prepared, processed, the labelling on products, and getting offers which sometimes are overlooked when you do shopping.

I found working as a community researcher is very enjoyable, it has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I’ve made friends near and far with other community researcher visiting their towns, their workplace and sharing knowledge that helped to make this book.

I hope you enjoy reading it as I have enjoyed making it.

by Vandy Butcher.

Thank you Vandy for writing this blog to share your work with us, and thank you to all the Community Researchers who met with our Community Reporters back in December. We see lots of similarities between the roles and look forward to future opportunities to collaborate and share our learning and experiences.