Client notes

What teams said after the pack went in

These notes refer to named commissions on this site. They are not ratings widgets; they record a specific argument, constraint, or meeting.

Colleagues seated at a long table during a working meeting

They refused to draw a ‘reach’ bar that mixed unique people with session counts. I was irritated on the Tuesday and grateful on the Thursday, when the panel asked exactly that question.

Dr Helen Okonkwo, Principal investigator, Midlands public-health programme · Grant impact briefing pack

The Theory of Change wall chart finally used the same outcome names as our logframe. Trustees stopped asking whether ‘pathway two’ was a different project.

Marcus Ellison, Programme manager, research charity consortium · Theory of Change diagram

Captions were plainer than our last annual report, which some colleagues found blunt. The board, however, stopped circling the charts in pencil.

Priya Nandakumar, Centre administrator, university research unit · Programme outcome figure set

The synthesis pack made our thin samples obvious on purpose. That honesty took a page, but it saved us from over-claiming attendance as outcome.

James Whitfield, Independent evaluator · Evaluation evidence synthesis pack

The Huthwaite mapping session was useful, though we still left two work packages unconfirmed because leads were absent. The decision note recorded that, which was the point.

Aisha Rahman, Work-package lead, education research grant · Outcome mapping session

A longer note: mid-term annex for a three-site education grant

A university-led education grant came to us in month twenty-two with last year’s charts still using an enrolment rule that site C had abandoned. The mapping session in Huthwaite confirmed two work packages and left a third unconfirmed because the lead was on leave. We drew eight figures, printed the unconfirmed package as a one-line gap, and delivered five days before the research office’s internal deadline.

The mild cost was extra time on the claim register. The useful result was a panel that asked about site C in words the annex already contained. That sequence — freeze definitions, then draw — is the one we still recommend for any grant impact briefing.

Read the flagship pack