The Business for Good West Yorkshire pilot programme is working to empower alternative business in West Yorkshire. Here’s what we’ve learnt so far about why and how.

A year on from our first discussions with partners about their hopes and aspirations for the Business for Good West Yorkshire (BfGWY) programme, we reflect on learning from set up and delivery of this important pilot programme for our region.   

It isn’t often that we get to work on an evaluation right at the start of a programme, but on the BfGWY pilot that’s exactly what happened, and it’s been inspiring to see the impacts of the programme from the get-go.  The way the programme was set up and delivered by partners who really know the context of alternative business is clearly having significant impacts for the alternative businesses involved.   

As a micro social enterprise based in West Yorkshire ourselves, we were keen to bring our expertise around evaluation in the VCSE sector to the BfGWY programme. It was important to the BfGWY partners, that whilst we are independent evaluators, we know the context and understand the alternative business sector too.  

Throughout the evaluation, we’ve used participatory methods, such as focus groups and conversations with participants at events to explore what’s working and where there are challenges, what’s changing for participants, and how the positive outputs and outcomes from the programme can be amplified.   

The headline is that we’ve seen the pilot programme is working to empower and strengthen alternative business in West Yorkshire, and that this is having positive impacts for the everyone involved.  

Based on programme activity between January and October 2024, five interesting things we’ve learnt about the Business for Good West Yorkshire pilot are: 

1. Aligned values of the programme partners are helping to achieve ambitious objectives.  
2. Early challenges around time and resources available impacted set up and initial delivery
3. Shared learning is key to effective programme design and delivery and overcoming challenges. 
4. Participation is helping to build confidence, skills knowledge and capacity.  
5. Creating a ‘space’ for Alternative Business brings benefits for those involved – participants, delivery partners, wider stakeholders.

​You can find more detail around these points in the BfGWY interim learning summary.   

We’ve seen that the Business for Good programme is different from other support offered to businesses in important ways. The delivery partners bring a range of different expertise to the programme and have a deep understanding of the support needs of alternative businesses.  This is possible because they are themselves mission-led and so understand the opportunities and challenges this brings.  

Across all these headlines, we’re starting to see some themes around people, process, and place, however, there are important elements of the programme aims connected to these themes that we do not yet fully understand.  For example, whether there are differences in how the pilot has developed and progressed in different parts of the region, whether experiences and outcomes for people from different types of alternative businesses differed, and, importantly, whether the programme is reaching marginalised communities and if so, how? Our next step as evaluators is to explore the data, we’ve gathered across the range of activities delivered by BfGWY to better understand how these themes connect and foster wider impacts for the alternative business support system in West Yorkshire.    
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In spring 2025, we’ll be producing our final evaluation report on the programme.  There’s so much to include in that so we’d love to hear from you about what feels most important.  If you have any ideas for what you would like to hear more about please get in touch.  Finally, please share this with anyone who might be interested in finding out more about this inspiring programme.  #BFGWY