People working or volunteering in small or medium-sized nonprofit organizations are new (or fairly new) to Social Impact Measurement. Cutting through the layers of information out there on the subject gets overwhelming and a complex project to start.
We learned from the board members and business development teams that changing environment of the philanthropy, is putting (much needed) focus on effective social impact measurement for internal decision-making and external transparency.
Here how we guide them to make a shift in thinking.
Converting Goal to Long-term Outcome Goal:
Working with many NGOs over the years we have seen them more passion driven then data driven! They have a very generic goal like promoting kindness and generosity in kids, making change agents by training musicians, mentoring artists to become community builders etc.
Looking from the impact lenses it seems non measurable but if we take a step further each of them can be further defined to incorporate long-term goal. Metrics build to show the evidence that,
• School supply given as annual back to school drive can motivate children to increase graduation rate by being ready for the school, improved attendance and decreased violence, thus economic empowerment.
• Musician trained to become a successful artist can invest in his/her community and bring economic uplifting and less violence.
Check points: Programs are Mission/Goal aligned?
Organizations come from all the spectrum of the scale, some have very defined program aligned to the goal and some are very vague. How providing a legal advice for intellectual property to an upcoming artist will bring regional peace or community empowerment? If programs are not directly connected to the path of change, getting back to the theory of change and adding few more steps is helpful.
Having a clear understanding of the program and goal is extremely important and along with that if social impact strategy consulting is taken into account, the result will be outstanding.
View Points-Who is Your Audience?
It is extremely important to know your Audience for the measurement. Ask the following questions to the team first. What is important to your funders? Corporate funders, individual donors and foundations all think differently and have varied questions. Often corporate donors have a concentration area like STEM education, women empowerment, poverty etc. They like to show the evidence from those angles.
What is important to your stakeholder? Stakeholders are not the only beneficiaries but volunteers, donors, employees, community etc. all can be stakeholders. If the children in one community are getting school supply and gets in to less violence, it results in higher graduation rate which ultimately affects the entire community. Volunteers are getting an avenue to be helpful in the community increases empathy, kindness and generosity. They can feel less depressed and more connected.
What is important to your beneficiaries?
Beneficiaries are also again not only recipients but it includes all the volunteers as well. While deciding on metrics, do include volunteer metrics and financial proxies.
Resource Allocation: Do You Have $$?
The process of initial engagement to learn operational process, goal, program understanding and data planning will require human and technology resources. Some new emerging tools like Airtable, silk.co, import.io and infogr.am are free to nonprofits and are very useful for data visualization. The new generation social impact evidence platforms like SoPact makes the process significantly short and cost effective with different and apt use of Social Impact Strategy.
Value creation: What are you going to do with the learning from the data?
Define what will you do with the learning from your metrics? Isolated impact knowledge feels great to the organization but it does not bring long-term change needed. Partner with like-minded organizations, collaborate and align the metrics to see the overall collective impact of similar programs. Sharing and learning from each other is a powerful tool and should never be ignored. When social impact reporting tool is taken into account, the value will show dramatic increase.
