Dr Sarah Morton and Dr Ailsa Cook, co-directors of Matter of Focus are leading the way in Scotland when it comes to proving that organisations are making a difference. 

Born and raised in the Northeast of Scotland, Aberdonian Dr Sarah Morton specialises in helping public sector organisations including children’s charities and health and social care partnerships track the real-world outcomes of their work. 

Using a distinctly Scottish approach, Sarah has become an expert at helping companies understand their data and how to best use it. Most recently, she scooped a Public Sector Innovation award at the ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards. 

Having grown up in Aberdeen and attending Aberdeen Grammar School before moving on to Stirling University and Edinburgh after graduating, Sarah alongside Ailsa founded Matter of Focus in 2017, spotting a gap in the market for user- friendly software that could transform the evaluation process for organisations. 

Public and third sector organisations can be flooded with data but can’t come to terms with how to report this in an effective and meaningful way. How can they prove their value if they aren’t efficiently reporting their outcomes and how they’re making a difference?

Collaborating with 130 organisations over the past five years, Dr Sarah Morton and Dr Ailsa Cook have assisted organisations such as Penumbra mental health charity and Edinburgh Unpaid Carers through their company (case studies for both are available). 

Sarah and Ailsa have recently published a book “How Do You Know If You Are Making a Difference: A practical handbook for Public Service Organisations”. The book focuses on painting a realistic picture of contribution towards change and offers practical tips for organisations to understand how they’re making a difference. 

Dr Sarah Morton explains, “Often organisations feel that they need to ‘feed the machine’ with numbers, categories and data that seem meaningless.  We help organisations to establish a practical but robust way of understanding if they are making a difference.  We work with teams who strongly believe in the work they do and know implicitly that they do make a difference. 

But when it comes to reporting they struggle to bring together and evidence their contribution to change. Quantitative approaches alone can’t tell the story of what difference work makes, nor how it makes a difference.  We use an alternative approach to numbers-based software and champion learning and reflection.”

Sarah, Ailsa and their colleagues worked closely with Penumbra, a pioneering mental health charity offering services and support to people across Scotland. Penumbra champions the power of lived experience and peer support in helping people create meaningful change in their lives but lacked an overarching evaluation framework to articulate the success of their approach.  

Working closely with the team Matter of Focus helped Penumbra’s staff demonstrate the power of what they do and why.  Furthermore, they are now in a position to be involved in the conversation around the development of national policies and approaches.

Matter of Focus also worked with Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, Unpaid Carers team, a local public and third sector partnership that provides and commissions care and support to unpaid carers in Edinburgh. The organisation had a clear understanding of their quantitative data but lacked the understanding of outcomes and measuring the success and impact on people’s lives. 

Working closely with the team and using the special software developed by Matter of Focus to analyse and report on the qualitative data as well as quantitative, they developed a system which helped Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership to prove that the work they do really makes a difference.

Speaking about the publication of How Do You Know If You Are Making a Difference, Dr Ailsa Cook said: “We bring together practical approaches with sound academic thinking and are passionate about working with organisations to explore how they make a difference.  We took a leap of faith leaving the university to establish our business and develop this approach.  We are thrilled that it has been received with such enthusiasm by Government teams and organisations in Scotland, the UK and beyond.”

Stephen Finlayson, Head of Innovation and Improvement at Penumbra said: “Having worked with Matter of Focus in a previous role, I was aware of the vital work they do and pivotal change they can make to a business. At Penumbra, we come into contact with a variety of different cases which can be complex. 

The work with Matter of Focus enabled us to tell these complex stories, in a friendly, accessible and user-friendly way.

This gives us the opportunity to tell the honest stories in their complexity which is extremely important to us and feels ethically right.”

Katie Williamson, Strategic Programme Manager, Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership added: “Initially, those involved were apprehensive on the work Matter of Focus were implementing and how much time this would take. After understanding the processes and seeing the benefits of the reporting, the partners realised how beneficial this would be.

The team at Matter of Focus were clear with their approach and had a clear understanding of the third sector challenges and we cannot thank them enough for their support.”