It’s such a simple question, on the face of it. “How many people are helped by your funding?”

But it’s not a question with a simple answer. We’ve been reflecting on it recently, as we analyse data for the first ‘check in’ report on the work of the Covenant Fund under our current three-year grants cycle. What do beneficiary numbers tell us? Are they meaningful as context for our work? If not, why track them anyway?

First, we have to define what we mean by “helped.” This isn’t an input-output exercise: in the civil society sector, help means many different things. The people with whom a project works are very rarely ‘just’ receiving one specific support service from that organisation (and we’ll have some interesting analysis on that in our forthcoming report, so watch this space). It’s the brilliant and beautiful thing about the way charities, CICs and other non-profits work. Someone who’s taken part in an activity session by a charity might get talking to the project worker at the end, and after a few sessions, might share more information about other challenges they’re facing. They might be referred for a chat with a debt counselling charity partner down the road because that person now trusts the project worker so much that they’ve divulged that money worries are the root cause of the anxiety they came for help with in the first place. The original charity might make yet another cup of tea for a family member who came to give the person a lift home turns out they’ve been going through it too, trying to support their partner. Who’s been ‘helped’ there?