Building and evidencing resilient communities 

Sanctuary’s mission is to build affordable homes and sustainable communities where people choose to live. Through their Sustainable Communities programme, Sanctuary’s community investment team has been making a shift towards more place-based systems change ways of working, grounded in the principles of asset-based community development. 

The community investment team recognised that while they had developed a place-based programme they were proud of, there was a need to shift the ways they were evidencing change: from more traditional models of impact and value measurement to one more grounded in asset-based community development principles. They partnered with Renaisi-TSIP (then Renaisi), to move towards this goal. 

Over the course of the partnership, Renaisi worked alongside the Sanctuary team, their voluntary and community sector partners and some residents to: 

• Co-design definitions of community connection and community resilience. Ideas that are central to the programme. 

• Develop a theory of change that reflects the asset-based values of the programme. 

• Analyse and critique existing evaluation frameworks and approaches through a place-based systems change lens. 

• Tie the outcomes of the programme back to the UN Sustainable Development Goals that Sanctuary has committed to advancing. 

• Develop approaches that centre learning and community storytelling – including through piloting a community research model – to better reflect the programme’s values and new theory of change. 

• Validate the programme as an example of effective place-based systems change practice. 

“For over a decade, we’ve been refining our approach to community development and investment. It was important to introduce an external review of our work and evaluation through a place-based systems change lens. 

Renaisi’s expertise and perspective proved invaluable, offering fresh discovery, constructive challenge, and a reassuring endorsement that our approach is delivering significant social impact. Importantly, it highlighted the need to evolve our evaluation methods so we can better demonstrate impact at a place level.”  

– Marie-Claire Wattison, Head of Community Investment 

Read the Executive Summary below to learn more about our findings, and how we collaboratively re-envisioned the evaluation approach for Sanctuary’s Sustainable Communities programme.