Impact Hub

The Impact Hub (formerly known as the Outcomes Measurement Framework) is the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust’s own internal impact measurement tool, which was developed in conjunction with Anglia Ruskin University.

The Hub was developed as a GDPR-compliant way to measure the impact of a Trust funding programme, allowing comparable data to be drawn from each grant holder within a funding programme.

Impact measurement is via a series of surveys, which are sent to the project user, and these are normally completed at the entry point to the project, and at the exit.

Use of the Hub was rolled out in 2019, with Positive Pathways programme grant holders using the Hub to measure impact, as one of their terms and conditions of grant.

The Impact Hub has now been rolled out to the majority of the Trust’s other grant programmes and now has nearly 8,000 beneficiaries enrolled as of March 2023.

New features are being added all the time, and additions over the last year have included:

• Beneficiary data export function
• Project data export function
• New survey set – UCLA Loneliness Scale
• New survey set – ONS4 Wellbeing Scale

We would like all VPPP Portfolio Leads to use the Impact Hub as part of their grant management, and for all portfolio leads to encourage their partners to use the Hub if it is suitable for their particular project. You can find more information in our useful guide on using the Impact Hub for VPPP Portfolio Leads.

We have four different survey sets on the Impact Hub:

• The ONS4 Wellbeing Scale
• The Wellbeing Index
• The Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)
• The UCLA Loneliness Scale

All projects are now assigned the ONS4 Wellbeing Scale as their primary survey set. This survey, devised by the Office of National Statistics, is a well-used survey set among UK researchers, including other public bodies and research institutions.

The survey is a set of four questions, based around different wellbeing measures, Life Satisfaction, Worthwhile, Happiness and Anxiety, and asks users how they feel about each one on a scale of 1-10.

Your grant manager may suggest the use of additional survey sets as well as the ONS4 Wellbeing Survey to complement your impact and evaluation gathering, depending on your project.

Below is a summary of the other survey sets available:

The Veterans Wellbeing Index (WBI) is suitable for adult veteran beneficiaries only. Developed in the United States for use with US veterans, it has been validated and tested on over 100,000 individuals. The Trust have been working with research partner Anglia Ruskin University to develop and roll out the survey for UK use.

The survey works best for veteran cohorts and for projects of a fixed duration working in small groups.

It is a series of four surveys measuring satisfaction/functionality in the following areas:

• Work
• Social Relationships
• Health
• Finance

The score of all four surveys together gives an accurate picture of how satisfied a beneficiary is in all areas of life, and when measured more than once, gives you a baseline score, and then how much the beneficiary has improved in these areas over time.

WEMWBS consists of 15 statements about feelings and thoughts. Beneficiaries are asked to think about how they have been feeling over the last two weeks, and state how much they agree with the statements on a sliding scale – from ‘all the time’ to ‘none of the time’.

The UCLA Loneliness Scale is a simple survey consisting of four questions asking beneficiaries how lonely or isolated they feel on a sliding scale from “Never” to “Often/Always”. This particular survey set is universally used by researchers studying loneliness, so the data provided by it can be useful to compare different cohorts of beneficiaries.

If you are an existing Impact Hub user and would like to discuss the benefits of any of our survey sets in further detail, please do get in touch.

The Impact Hub runs via a standard internet browser with a secure login system which allows grant holders to log in and input details about their beneficiaries.

The Trust will input basic details about your project, once awarded, and an automated e-mail is sent to the registered point of contact for each grant. This e-mail allows the grant holder to set a password of their choosing. Once successfully logged in, this person is designated as a ‘grant admin’ user, enabling them to add other staff users to the account.

Once registered, staff members from each project can start adding beneficiary data. Each project beneficiary needs to be registered onto the system, which can be done manually by the grant holders themselves, or by sending a link to the beneficiary to ask them to complete the details online.

Firstly, to comply with UK GDPR, beneficiaries are taken through a “consent” process, which allows the system to record their consent to use and store their data. The only organisation that will see identifying data is the grant holder organisation. The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust can only see anonymised data, and will never be able to identify an individual.

The registration system will ask for basic demographic details about their project users, including details of their military service.

It is important to note that beneficiaries are free to decline to answer any questions if they do not feel comfortable answering them. 

The Trust have also created a resource for you to use with your beneficiaries in the form of a letter from the Trust which shares more information why we are using the Impact Hub.

Please do give this to your beneficiaries or talk through it with them when you ask them to engage with the Hub. We hope it will answer their questions about the benefits of gathering impact and evaluation data from each project and reassure them of the steps that we are taking to keep their data safe and secure. Download the resource here – we hope you find it useful.

Impact Hub training can be provided by the Trust on an individual or group basis, please contact us to request assistance.

A quick user guide can be found here: Impact Hub Grant Holder User Guide

A more comprehensive user guide video on how to set your Impact Hub login for the first time, add beneficiaries and surveys can be found at the top of this page.

Once registered, impact is measured through use of the ONS4 Wellbeing Survey. This is normally given to the beneficiary at the beginning of their contact with you (when they start engaging with your project) and at the end. If you have a longer project and want to deploy additional surveys to get more data, that is absolutely fine.

As a grant holder using the Impact Hub, you can benefit from the data that the Hub will provide you.  You can download project and individual beneficiary data. This data belongs to you, and can be used to prove the impact of your project.

The Trust is also looking at ways in which the anonymised data that it collects via the Impact Hub can be used to prove the impact of the projects that it funds, and further information about ways in which we will be doing this will be coming soon.

Got a question about the Impact Hub?

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions section where we answer the most common queries we receive.

If your question is not featured here then please do contact us.

GDPR and the Impact Hub

Important Information for Grant Holders and Beneficiaries

The Trust take their obligations in terms of compliance to the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR legislation extremely seriously. As a Non-Departmental Public Body we are subject to regular external audit, and our Data Protection processes and procedures have passed this level of scrutiny with assurance.

However, we understand that grant holders and beneficiaries may be concerned about how the Trust uses their data.

Below are some frequently asked questions about the Impact Hub and GDPR, which we hope you and your project beneficiaries will find informative and useful.

How is data lawfully obtained via the Impact Hub?

The Impact Hub is based on explicit consent. Giving consent is completely up to the individual beneficiary, and it is important to note that no beneficiary should be turned away from your project if they do not wish to give this.

Your beneficiaries can also choose to use the Hub, but not give any information that would identify them. In this case, they can choose a memorable username, or a pseudonym, so they can also access the wellbeing questionnaire at a later date.

NB: Your beneficiaries can change their consent at any time.

How do we know our data is safe?

The Trust does not have access to any personal data through the Impact Hub. All data that the Trust has access to is aggregated by programme and is anonymised. The only people who will have access to personal data are the administrator and staff of each organisation.

It is therefore up to each organisation to ensure logins are current, and that access to the Impact Hub is revoked to staff who leave the organisation.

The Impact Hub data is held on secure UK-based servers by an organisation with many years’ experience in managing tools of this kind.

What if we think a data breach has occurred?

There is a data breach notification section in the Hub. If you know or suspect that there has been unauthorised access to the Hub, then you must immediately complete and submit the data breach questionnaire. There is more information on this in the help section. We may shut down access to all or part of the Impact Hub while we investigate.

Does the Trust have a Privacy Policy?

The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust also adheres to a strict Privacy Policy

This privacy policy explains what personal data is collected by the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust through our grant making activities and how and why we use this data.

How do we withdraw consent?

Our processing of your personal data via the Impact Hub relies on your consent. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time and the right to ask for your personal data to be transferred to another organisation (known as the right to data portability).

For more information or to exercise your data protection rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the contact details below. There are other rights not listed here and exemptions may apply in some circumstances.

I have another query about my personal data rights

If you are unhappy about how your personal data has been processed, or if you have any queries, please do contact us.

I would like to contact the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO)

You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office – contact details below – which regulates the processing of personal data.

If you have any questions, queries or complaints, and to exercise your personal data rights, please contact us at info@covenantfund.org.uk

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113 or via email https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email or at the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.