Well-being measure

Improving the quality of life—the well-being—of the people they work with is at the heart of what many charities do. But can you measure something as intangible as well-being? We believe it's possible.

We also believe it is essential: helping charities to measure the well-being of those
they work with is an important part of understanding and proving the full impact
of what they do.

NPC's well-being measure

With this in mind, NPC is developing a well-being measure to enable organisations, including charities and schools, to demonstrate their impact on the well-being of young people aged 11 to 16. We plan to develop and adapt this tool for young people with specific needs and, in future, for different age groups.

The well-being measure provides organisations with a simple, reliable and academically-robust way of understanding the difference they make to young people’s lives, by helping organisations to evaluate seven aspects of young people’s subjective well-being:

• self-esteem
• resilience
• emotional health
• quality of relationships with peers
• quality of relationships with family
• satisfaction with school
• satisfaction with community

Five charities have piloted NPC’s well-being measure, testing that it is reliable, sensitive to change and practical for charities to use. They are: Barnardo’s, Beatbullying, The Outward Bound Trust, The Place2Be and The Prince’s Trust.

The benefits of NPC's well-being measure include:

• An academically-robust and reliable means of evaluating projects and tracking
  change over time. This can be used both as a management tool and as a way of demonstrating results to funders.
• A simple to use tool that doesn’t require any statistical training. It can all be
  administered and managed online with minimum fuss, reducing room for error.
• A clear and concise report, including simple charts and graphs, as well as data on which to base further analysis.
• Comparison with a standard population. This tells you how the young people you work measure up to other young people within the UK.

Our tool

We are currently in the process of turning the well-being measure into an online tool, working with Public Zone—a company dedicated to helping the public and charitable sectors through technology.

We are working with ten organisations (national charities, local charities and a secondary school), which will try out the test version of the online tool from September. We will continue development based on their feedback.

The online tool will be completed in late November 2010. At first, it will be open to a limited number of subscribers, before it becomes more widely available in 2011 (more details to follow). We are doing this to allow us to develop the best possible service around using the tool.

NPC's Well-being Measure will be a paid-for subscription service, allowing subscribers to survey the young people they work with and receive a customised report of their results. Guide prices will be available in September.

To register your interest in the tool, or to be added to our well-being mailing list and receive regular project updates, please email: wellbeing@philanthropycapital.org.

We are grateful to have the support of the Private Equity Foundation, which is helping to fund the development of the tool.

Our consulting

NPC provides consultancy on well-being to individual organisations, including Depaul UK, Beatbullying, and The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. This is a useful way to pilot well-being measurement with a specific group or project and to see whether it could be rolled out more widely.
For more information about our well-being consulting services please contact a member of the well-being team by emailing wellbeing@philanthropycapital.org.

>>Read Feelings count, NPC's report on the development of the well-being measure.

>>Read blog posts about NPC's well-being measure, well-being seminars, the impact of bullying on well-being, and happiness and resilience in children.