Spitalfields Crypt Trust (SCT) offers a range of support, rehabilitation and training services to people facing problems such as homelessness, alcohol and drugs misuse, poverty and social isolation. Their mission is to help people recovering from addiction to get clean and sober, develop self-respect and work towards a better future.

SCT is seeking to access new income streams, in particular local and central government funding, to improve its future sustainability. SCT approached Pro Bono Economics as the charity needed to demonstrate the public value of its work, in terms of costs saved to public services as a result of the services SCT provides.

Pro Bono Economics matched SCT with experienced economists Alex Muscatelli and Mark Gallaher to undertake this project.

As SCT did not yet have adequate data to carry out a quantitative assessment of the cost savings its services deliver, Alex and Mark provided SCT with advice and tools for data and information collection to conduct an evaluation of the charity’s current service users. This included a questionnaire to collect some retrospective data to estimate the possible impact of SCT’s work. The questionnaire produced by Alex and Mark will be modified and incorporated into SCT’s monitoring and evaluation programme to improve the charity’s evaluation processes.

After the charity has collected sufficient data, the next step will be to conduct a retrospective analysis of SCT services users and construct a counter-factual scenario looking at the outcomes of individuals that have not had support from SCT to provide a benchmark against which to estimate the impact of the charity’s intervention.

We would like to thank Alex and Mark for their time and hard work on this project.

23rd May 2017