Impact. The daunting word so many in the nonprofit sector have come to dread. The hot topic at conferences, roundtables, meetings, and featured in countless blogs and articles. “Measuring impact” has become a mantra for nonprofit professionals around the world. Growth in the number of nonprofit organizations and faith in the good intentions of everyone involved seems to no longer be enough; evidence is now required.
Multiple approaches have been developed to help nonprofits define and measure their social impact, but a single, stand-alone, universally accepted framework does not exist yet.
Although measuring social impact has become increasingly important for nonprofits and their donors or funders, the task at hand is challenging – to say the least.
University of Michigan defined social impact as “a significant, positive change that addresses a pressing social challenge. Having a social impact is the result of a deliberate set of activities.” […]
Albeit a difficult task, measuring social impact matters. This is especially the case for nonprofits since they seek to deliver their mission and bring value to their beneficiaries, and these […]
The most common approach to thinking about and measuring social impact is Theory of Change. Theory of Change looks at why and how can the desired change happen in a particular […]
At the end of this process, you and your team should be able to answer the following questions: Who are you seeking to influence or benefit (target population)? What benefits […]
Theory of Change can be broken down into Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact. Here’s how you can go about designing a Theory of Change for your nonprofit: As an example, […]
These are specific pieces of information about what outputs you delivered and who you delivered them to, and whether your beneficiaries were satisfied. Output indicators are usually very tangible (and […]
In lesson 7, you might come up with a long list of indicators and a long list of information to collect. At this point, you need to review the list […]
Now that you have your indicators outlined and your data collection tools developed, it’s time to deploy them. Before doing so, train your staff on the basic tenants of responsible […]
Too much bureaucracy: Impact measurement should help, not take up time and resources and weigh down staff. The inflexibility of tools and frameworks: Social impact measurement tools and frameworks need to be […]
A lot has been said about measuring impact in this blog post, and there is a lot more to be said, but it’s important to note that measuring impact is […]
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