Resource ID: INDIGO-ARES-0040
Link: http://improvingquality.org.uk/
Improving Quality is the quality scheme written to be used both as a self assessment tool as well as external assessment. Its focus is on elements that all not for profit organisations need. Although written to target small organisations, it is equally applicable to larger ones.
Improving Quality is the only sectoral quality mark that covers the work of charities and other organisations: no other assurance award addresses all the essential areas necessary for the effective management and governance of a charity or other third sector organisation.
IQ addresses all the key areas of organisational life in 4 elements:
Accountable – Good Governance, Leadership and management
Welcoming – Involving Service users, managing and developing Staff and Volunteers, Equality and Diversity and working with others
Effective – refers to the services that an organisations provides and the planning, delivery, monitoring and evaluation that the organisations carries out
Sustainable – How the organisation manages, risk, money and the resources to make service delivery happen
Impact goal: Health, Defence, Housing, Agnostic, Democracy, Education, Well being, SDG oriented, Social impact, Local rejuvenation, Sustainability eco, Development poverty reduction, Employment financial well being
Internal/external: External, Internal
Leader: Improving Quality
Method: Interviews, Observation, Operational data, Mission alignment
Output format: Qualitative only
Scale: Meso
Sourcing: Self driven, Outsource to vendor
Time frame: Ongoing
Type: Consultancy
Used in sectors: Charity, Social enterprises, Developed countries
Who: Third sector
INDIGO data are shared for research and policy analysis purposes. INDIGO data can be used to support a range of insights, for example, to understand the social outcomes that projects aim to improve, the network of organisations across projects, trends, scales, timelines and summary information. The collaborative system by which we collect, process, and share data is designed to advance data-sharing norms, harmonise data definitions and improve data use. These data are NOT shared for auditing, investment, or legal purposes. Please independently verify any data that you might use in decision making. We provide no guarantees or assurances as to the quality of these data. Data may be inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, and/or not current for various reasons: INDIGO is a collaborative and iterative initiative that mostly relies on projects all over the world volunteering to share their data. We have a system for processing information and try to attribute data to named sources, but we do not audit, cross-check, or verify all information provided to us. It takes time and resources to share data, which may not have been included in a project’s budget. Many of the projects are ongoing and timely updates may not be available. Different people may have different interpretations of data items and definitions. Even when data are high quality, interpretation or generalisation to different contexts may not be possible and/or requires additional information and/or expertise. Help us improve our data quality: email us at indigo@bsg.ox.ac.uk if you have data on new projects, changes or performance updates on current projects, clarifications or corrections on our data, and/or confidentiality or sensitivity notices. Please also give input via the INDIGO Data Definitions Improvement Tool and INDIGO Feedback Questionnaire.