Is your organisation all about making positive changes for people and/or the planet?
For example, are you:
- a business or social enterprise that helps people to create positive change, or offers products and services focused on the environment or community?
- a not-for-profit offering support to individuals, other organisations, or your industry?
- a volunteer group that devotes time and energy to helping others or the environment?
If so, you’ll be keen to know what difference your work is making, also known as an impact measurement framework. As a consultant in this area, I’m often asked questions like:
- How can we prove that our work is making a difference?
- How can we put a dollar value on the benefits we’ve created with our work?
- How do we measure our success beyond just counting numbers?
An impact measurement framework can tell you all this, and despite the fancy name, it’s not hard to get started with one! Book a free 30 min chat with me for some personalised advice about setting up your impact measurement framework.
How can an impact measurement framework help you?
Creating an impact measurement framework has many benefits, including:
- Provide evidence you can use in grant applications and discussions with investors about the difference you’re making, and why they should give you funding.
- Save time and money by making informed decisions about where to focus your resources, based on where you’re making the most difference.
- Motivate your team by showing them how their hard work is achieving your mission, and making a real difference for people and/or the environment.
What exactly is an impact measurement framework?
Impact measurement framework is a fancy name for ‘a way to know what difference you are making in the world with your work’.
The ‘framework’ part means that there are several different steps or elements in working out the change you’ve created, also known as your impact. The 3 main steps are:
- Define the change you want to see.
- Measure the change you’ve created, aka your impact.
- Make decisions based on your results, to help your organisation truly achieve its goals.
Step 1. What is the CHANGE that you want to see?
When we think about measuring our success and achievements, we often go straight to counting numbers: number of clients we’ve helped, number of events we’ve held, number of products sold. These numbers have their place, but that’s not our impact.
Our impact is the CHANGE we want to see as result of our everyday work.
What is the CHANGE you want to see as a result of helping those clients, or holding those events, or selling those products? What’s the big picture here? For example:
- as a result of providing coaching services to clients, do you want them to gain employment?
- as a result of selling natural soil products, do you want people to use less chemicals on their lawns?
- as a result of providing training to people, do you want them to change their behaviour?
Maybe you’re hoping for changes for your staff or volunteers as well, e.g. improve their skills, make new friends.
What’s the actual change or difference you want to see, as a result of your everyday work?
Step 2. Measure the change you’ve created, using your impact measurement framework.
Now that you’ve defined the change that you want to see, you can come up with ways to measure it.
There are many different ways to measure change, such as feedback surveys, testimonials, stakeholder interviews, and measuring physical changes.
Remember we don’t want to simply measure things like numbers of coaching clients. We want to know how many of those clients went on to gain employment, or experience another important change as a result of our coaching. We don’t want to measure just the number of products we sold – what changed for our customers as a result of using those products?
If you already have a feedback survey, take another look at it. Does it include questions about changes in knowledge, skills, behaviour or attitudes that people have experienced as a result of your products and services?
If you’re working with the environment or physical resources, is there visible or tangible evidence of the changes resulting from your work? Before and after photos, and monitoring data collected over time, are particularly powerful tools to demonstrate change.
I’m often asked about social impact measurement or social return on investment (SROI). This is a way of measuring changes that are hard to put a number or dollar value on, e.g. improved self-confidence, a feeling of safety. You will get the most out of SROI if you have the time and resources to support a multi-step process, and you’re willing to be guided by what your stakeholders or customers think about your work. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.
Step 3. Make decisions based on your impact measurement results.
So you’ve been collecting information on what’s changed for people, the environment, your industry etc, as a result of your work. Fantastic! Now it’s time to review all that data and work out what it means for your organisation.
When looking at your results, ask yourself the following questions:
- Did any change actually happen? Was it the change you expected?
- How many resources did it take to create that change? Was the amount of resources worth the change that you achieved? Could you shift your existing resources around to make better use of them?
- Who have you helped? Who still needs your help?
- Where should you focus your efforts in future to create the most impact?
This part of your impact measurement framework will give you valuable information to continually improve your operations, and check whether you are truly achieving the change you wanted to make in the first place.
As you can see, impact measurement framework is a big name for a common-sense process that many businesses, not-for-profits and volunteer groups can benefit from. There’s no better time than now to start measuring your positive impact!
Need some advice on how to measure your impact? Book a free 30 min chat with me to discuss how I can help.
Learn more about my advisory services in impact measurement.
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