We’re working with Bristol City Funds to adapt the Thriving Places Index framework to their funding criteria – creating a city-level evaluation framework that measures the impact of the projects they support. 

The ‘City Funds Evaluation Programme’ will comprise a set of city-level indicators relating to City Funds priority areas and the One City Plan, alongside a bespoke Happiness Pulse module to help measure direct impact on the lives of beneficiaries. 

This new evaluation framework, like the Thriving Places Index, has a range of indicators to show how different project areas come together to help create a thriving and healthy city, built on a fair social foundation, within sustainable environmental limits. 

Below these headline scores the data is set out in themes and sub-domains to show clear and increasingly detailed sets of policy and priority action areas within which to focus resources and effort. Centre for Thriving Places will produce guides for City Funds to use the framework as a ‘menu’ of indicators to support funding decision making as well as reporting on the long and mid-term impact of the funding and investment. 

The bespoke Happiness Pulse survey will be used to gather data from citizens on their subjective wellbeing, and on aspects of targeted behaviour change, providing grantees and investees with easy access to a means of gathering primary data on the impact of projects on citizens and communities. 

The evaluation framework is set up to allow ongoing data collection and reporting on impact in relation to the systemic change that City Funds aims to achieve over time.  

Chair of City Funds, Andy Street, said: 

“We’re delighted that the Centre for Thriving Places is working with us to create a sophisticated tool for monitoring the impact of the grant and investment funding we make. Aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals and the One City Plan, the tool will keep us on track in our aim to address inequalities and support real change in our city.”  

About City Funds

City Funds is working to transform Bristol by funding solutions that target the causes and effects of inequality. A partnership between Quartet Community Foundation, Bristol & Bath Regional Capital and Bristol City Council, City Funds uses its £10 million investment fund and aligned grants to strengthen organisations solving some of the biggest problems facing Bristol. By partnering with communities, sectors, experts and other funders, City Funds is facilitating new solutions to inequality.