This Evaluation Toolkit has been developed by the Money Advice Service to help organisations plan and carry out evaluations of programmes that seek to improve people’s financial capability. By doing this, we are supporting the UK Financial Capability Strategy’s commitment to encourage good evaluation practice across the sector.
We worked with stakeholders and evaluation experts to develop the Toolkit. Much of this work has focused on developing the suite of outcomes frameworks, including question banks, that lie at its heart - to ensure they are evidence-based, accessible and cover the range of outcomes that organisations may be seeking to address. Alongside these we have written guidance, tools and templates, and selected further guidance from sources we trust, to help organisations plan and conduct their evaluation.
We developed our Toolkit throughout 2014 and 2015, and launched it in May 2016. In June 2017 we made a raft of additions and improvements - mostly to streamline content and improve accessibility - based on piloting and feedback.
The Financial Capability Evaluation Toolkit can be used by any organisation that wishes to measure and understand changes in people’s financial capability, bringing benefits such as:
The Insight & Evaluation team at the Money Advice Service can help you make the most of this resource - get in touch with us at whatworks@fincap.org.uk
We also recommend that you explore the research published by the Money Advice Service - a valuable set of resources, such as the UK Financial Capability Survey findings, analysis of the Building Blocks of Financial Capability and Segmentation analysis, that you can use to refine your work and target your activity more effectively.
More widely, the Financial Capability Evidence Hub is an excellent and growing source of evidence that can inform the design of your activity to improve people’s financial capability.
We are grateful to the following organisations for helping us develop the outcomes frameworks and question banks, and/or wider elements of the Toolkit, in alphabetical order:
Family Kids and Youth, Kantar Public UK, Natcen, New Philanthropy Capital, Project Oracle, Shed Consulting, The Social Innovation Partnership, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and Young Enterprise.
We would also like to thank all those who have piloted the Toolkit and/or outcomes frameworks, thereby helping us to identify improvements:
Charity for Civil Servants, Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice Bureau Conwy, Debt Advice Foundation, London Institute of Banking and Finance, Money Advice Scotland, The Money Charity, MyBnk, National Skills Academy for Financial Services, Quaker Social Action, Renfrewshire Council, Royal Bank of Scotland, Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership, Wales Co-op, Wessex Water, and Young Enterprise.
