S1 #6: Latest Theory of Change and prototype iterations

I am feeling energised after a long weekend, where I got to see family and friends for the first time since lockdown. The rest of the week flew by with lots of time focused on a few specific areas of work.

What have I been doing?

• Salesforce developments — working with Hyphen8 and BSA colleagues trying to get the foundations in place for using Salesforce as our grant management system.
• Some business as usual activity: finance, considering development phase risks, planning.
• We had a really productive and thought-provoking Project Board whereby BSA and Wellcome spent quite a lot of time interrogating the most recent iterations of the Theory of Change (ToC) and funding scheme prototypes.

Funding Scheme Prototypes

In reviewing the funding scheme prototypes we grappled with a few areas:

• Geographical v’s UK wide reach of the funding programme. Should we focus on a small number of geographical areas or narrow our focus through a thematic approach?
• Whilst a number of schemes may be suitable to ensure grant holders at different stages of their journey can access relevant funding and support, how do we make sure that do not complicate the applicant journey. Do we have one ‘front-door’ rather than different schemes?
• The scale of and what type of wrap around support provided by the funding programme to grantees — how does this enable grantees to achieve better public engagement in health research rather than providing generic organisational capacity building support.
• Grantees ability to access further funding within the programme once an idea has been tested — should this linear progression only be available to those who have started out developing their ideas within this fund or will we enable people who are further in that journey with more developed ideas to also apply
• Cohort intake v’s rolling open programme.

Further reflections on the latest Theory of Change

• This is a small funding programme so we need to be realistic in what it can achieve. We will be using this funding programme to understand barriers and issues at play in public engagement in health research and we should not underestimate how this in itself will be difficult. Therefore, we need to ensure that the ToC does not over promise and under deliver. If we set the bar to high, it will be too difficult to fund things that meet expected standards and outcomes, creating a barrier in itself.
• Role of connectors. We are defining ‘Connectors’ as individuals (inc. those within organisations) who have access, trust and established relationships with the community. We need to ensure that the ToC reflects both community and researcher connectors and the different roles connectors can play within this programme as: Primary sets of applicants; encouraging people to apply; and making links between communities and researchers
• How are we conceptualising trust? Katherine Mathieson, the CEO of the British Science Association, referred us to some really interesting thinking about trust — Onora O’Neill’s definition of trust — ‘appropriate blend of transparency and accountability’. The question is within this programme can we expect trust to be a direct outcome? It is likely that trust may go down first when things become transparent, e.g. realising that researchers are motivated by things like publications, which might lead them to research specific things rather than what people feel is important to them. Have a watch of Onora’s Ted Talk for a bit more food for thought.

https://www.ted.com/talks/onora_o_neill_what_we_don_t_understand_about_trust?language=en

• Getting the glossary right is quite challenging but so important to get us all on the same page
• We have some excellent personas developed as part of the ToC but it would also be helpful to take these further and include how these ‘personas’ would access the fund and example of their ideas that we might fund. It is important that people who we are targeting as part of this fund can see themselves in these personas.

Reflections/ learnings this week

• We started the branding journey in parallel with the ToC and prototype development. However, both of these are constantly evolving so the early branding work reflects the earlier iterations. We have now put a hold on the branding work until we have the ToC and prototypes locked in.
• Zoom recordings are so useful to go back over when getting lots of feedback, especially detailed feedback — although listening to yourself over and over again is pretty cringe-worthy
• We have been working at a phenomenal pace during this development period but it is important to build in time to stop and reflect. That is what we are doing over the next three weeks.
• The development process throws up unexpected and new questions just as you think you are nearly there. Do not see this as oversight in the work to date but embrace it as part of the process of evolving and conceptualising something new.

Next week is also a short week for me and I will be spending further time on the Theory of Change and protoypes, so expect my next week notes in two weeks. In my next blog I will hopefully be able to share some of the thinking around the questions we have been grappling with above.