Strategies and Outcomes

Strategies are a cumulative group or banner that these outcomes sit within. Often seen as the impact or long-term effect of programming.

Strategies, can either be from the organisation itself or from funders (e.g. DCMS, Children in Need, National Lottery)

E.g. An organisation's work may be linked to the DCMS Strategy, within this strategy there would be outcomes such as 'Physical Wellbeing, Mental Wellbeing, Individual Development, Economic Development and Social & Community Development.'

The work organisation's deliver and record on Upshot such as Activities, Timeline Events, Media and Standardised questions can all be linked back to Outcomes.

• Visualising the link between Outcomes and the work you deliver
• Adding New Strategies and Outcomes
• Linking work back to Outcomes
• Reporting on Outcomes
• Global Outcomes
• Key Terms

Visualising the link between Outcomes and the work you deliver

For those unfamiliar with concepts such as Outcomes this area can prove challenging at first. Hopefully the below diagram helps to explain.

Here in this basic example we can see that the Organisation has a Strategy with four different Outcomes. 

The outcome 'increase prolonged and relevant employment opportunities' is linked back to the 'Job Ready +' project.

The activities delivered within this will also be linked back to this outcome and any more that are appropriate. 

The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) show us the key reporting metrics for the project which will provide evidence of the project achieving its outcome. 

These key reporting elements can vary from things such as the 'amount of unique attendees' to the '% of attendees having a positive experience' - the Upshot system provides the various measurement tools highlighted, such as 'Sessions, Registers, Surveys, Case Studies etc.' to enable the project to record this work. 

Adding New Strategies and Outcomes

Strategies are a cumulative group or banner that these outcomes sit within. Often seen as the impact or long-term effect of programming.

Strategies and Outcomes are often defined with the Upshot team in the initial set-up process of an organisation's account. As such, when these are set up these often are created at the back end.

This will be clear, if System Admin users go to  Admin > Strategies and this is blank. 

If organisations find this and their Strategies or Outcomes need amending or adding to please contact support@upshot.org.uk or your relevant Upshot contact.

If Strategies and Outcomes are created and managed in your organisation's account directly, they can be added to by going to Admin > Strategies.

If a new Strategy is needed this can be added here, and then Outcomes added to this as well.

Alternatively, users will see the list of existing Strategies and can add Outcomes to these.

Once created, it is important the relevant Project(s) are linked to these new outcomes, otherwise they will not appear as expected when colleagues are carrying out their work.

This can be done by: 

• Going into the Project
• Clicking on the General tab 
• Halfway down the page clicking on Amend these outcomes
• Opening up the relevant Strategy and selecting the additional Outcomes you would like users to choose from within the project
• Scrolling to the bottom and clicking Update Project Configuration

Linking work back to Outcomes

The work organisations complete on the system can be linked back to their Outcomes in various ways.

Activities have to be linked to Outcome(s) when created. The logic being that if an organisation is delivering a Yoga class or an Employability Workshop, if this doesn't link back to at least one of the Outcomes associated with the project then why is it being delivered. 

Timeline Events can be linked back to Outcome(s) if desired. When adding a Timeline Event to an attendee's profile, users have the option to link this back to the Project. If this link is made then the user also has the option to link this instance of the Timeline Event back to an Activity and Outcome(s).

This link can be particularly relevant if the Timeline Event was around the attendee 'Gaining a job', this might link to outcomes around 'increased independence' or improved mental wellbeing.'

More information around Activities here.

In other instances, when recording a Timeline Event such as a 'Change of Accommodation Status' this may be less relevant to link back to Project and thus any Outcomes.

This is why users have the flexibility here when adding Timeline Events. 

More information around Timeline Events here.

Standardised Questions can also be linked back to Outcomes and can then be used in Surveys. 

By creating this link, this can help to ensure that any users creating Surveys on your Upshot account, can easily find questions that will help them evidence outcomes, such as an 'increase in confidence' when creating their survey. 

More information around Standardised Questions here.

Indicators

Both Measured and Evidenced Indicators can be linked back to Outcomes. 

More information around Indicators here.

Media 

Media files can also be linked back to Outcomes.

More information around Media here.

Reporting on Outcomes

As multiple areas of your Upshot account can be linked to Outcomes, 'Reporting by Outcome' is split into different areas of the system.

Reporting on Attendance data linked to a Projects Outcomes

Within a project a user can report By outcome(s). When the report is generated, any information around  Measured and Evidenced Indicators, Contributing Activities and Media associated will be listed. 

On the right-hand side, users can choose to report on their Outcomes from a particular Strategy or any Global Outcomes their outcomes are linked to.

Before hitting  Go users can also filter this to only view information on work related to outcomes within a certain date range. If left blank this will include information on all the work delivered related to outcomes.

Once users have run the report they should click on the  + button to the right of the outcome to see the information generated.

Dependent on the information that has been added to the account users will see the following four drop downs, for  Measured Indicators, Evidenced Indicators, Contributing activities and Media. Again users should click on the + button to expand.

For  Measured and Evidenced Indicators the information presented will include the Description and Targets for each of the indicators associated to the outcome.

Contributing activities will list all the different activities linked back to this outcome and statistics around this. Users will see a summary of All activities combined from the project that have contributed to this outcome, but also a break down per activity.

It is worth noting that if users know the particular activities within the project that contribute to a particular outcome they may find other reporting tools on the system such as the People Report or the Statistics Report helpful to gain further insight on things such as the demographics of the individuals that have attended the sessions these activities are related to.

Following this is any  Media that has been associated back to this outcome.

Users can also choose to  Download this information. Whether this be downloading all information related to indicators associated with the outcome or all contributing activities as shown below.

The option to  Download can be seen on the right-hand side underneath the Outcome selection.

Reporting on Timeline Events linked back to Outcomes

If outcomes have been associated back to Timeline Events it can be helpful to add this evidence when reporting by outcomes. 

Using the Timeline Events Report can be the quickest way to collect the number of people with Timeline Events related to the outcome by using the filters on the right-hand side of this report.

Timeline Events can also be reported on using the People Report. To report on all the people that have Timeline Events linked back to a certain outcome users can apply the following filters on their People Report.

Using the other filters on the People Report will allow you to gain further insight around these attendees with Timeline Events related back to the outcome.

For more information please refer to the Reporting on Timeline Events guide.

Global Outcomes

A predetermined list of commonly used outcomes of which you can map or link your specific outcomes into to gauge how you are contributing to the ‘bigger picture’ or other organisational/government/funders aims.

For example, an organisation may have an outcome around improving physical health, this may be worded slightly differently or not directly related to DCMS funding, but an organisation may want their work around this to contribute to the 'bigger picture' of the DCMS outcome around 'Physical wellbeing.'

As such, an organisations own outcomes can be linked to more global outcomes. 

Again, the ability of organisations themselves to link their own outcomes to global outcomes is dependent on where the outcomes have been set up. Please contact support@upshot.org.uk for more information on this.

Key Terms

Global Outcomes:

A predetermined list of commonly used outcomes of which you can map or link your specific outcomes into to gauge how you are contributing to the ‘bigger picture’ or other organisational/government/funders aims.