Calderstones Evaluation Brief - an outputs and impact reporting plan for the International Centre for Shared Reading

The Reader has been based at the Calderstones Mansion since September 2014, when we signed a 125-year lease with Liverpool City Council. Since then we have opened The Reader Café, The Reader Ice Cream Parlour and our interactive children's story centre The Storybarn, and have welcomed thousands of visitors of all ages to enjoy regular Shared Reading groups, exhibitions, heritage tours, outdoor theatre productions and many special events.

We are currently undertaking an ambitious £5m redevelopment, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Liverpool City Council and other private funders, to transform our headquarters into our International Centre for Shared Reading.

We have already undertaken a review of the data that we envisage that we will need to collect which brings together the requirements from all of our funders, the information that we anticipate that we will need to support effective decision making and to be able to demonstrate the value and impact of Calderstones.

We now need some expert advice to:

• Review our current thinking and draft framework in the context of other similar organisations / experience advising us on elements that we have not yet considered and the appropriateness of the proposed data collection methods and time points.

• Revise, update and finalise the outputs, outcomes and impact measurement strategy for Calderstones ensuring that the requirements from key project funders, in particular Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England and Liverpool City Council are met in full.

• Undertake data benchmarking now, prior to building completion to establish a baseline for key data items.

• Develop data collection tools and embed a system for us to data collect in house in future years.

• If required, a recommended specification for CRM development of new module to incorporate collected data into our existing system

Summary of output required

We are looking particularly for experience in designing systems to collect outputs e.g. footfall, visitor numbers, economic impact, which will be particularly beneficial to complement the existing skills and experience of the team.

See the attached evaluation brief for full details of the project. Submissions should be sent to ailsahorne@thereader.org.uk by no later than 12 noon on 9th July 2018.