It is becoming increasingly important to measure the impact of your work. It is a requirement of many funders, but it is also important that you are clear about the difference you make so that more people will support your cause.
How we can help
Read on for tips on measuring and communicating your impact. Also see our Impact measurement toolkit for more on this important topic.
What is impact?
NCVO defines impact as “All changes resulting from an activity, project, or organisation. It includes intended as well as unintended effects, negative as well as positive, and long term as well as short term.”
But maybe we should think about it even more broadly as “everything an organisation does that benefits people and makes them happy.” So you could think of impact as the amount of happiness that you spread. Before you can measure your impact you need to think about what success will look like. How do you know when you’ve done a good job?
As John Hayes said, "We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot. So make sure you are measuring what is meaningful, rather than just what is measurable."
It is important to be able to communicate the difference you made to the people you are trying to help, or to the issue you are trying to improve. This can take the form of an impact report or annual report, but it can also include donor reporting, organisational reviews, internal communications, fundraising and communications materials. Communicating about your impact helps promote a culture of transparency and accountability and allows others to understand and learn from your work.
Top Tips for Measuring your Impact
- Start simply. Apply common sense. Something is a lot better than nothing.
- Apply the “so what?” test. Think about what you do e.g. “I ran a training course”. Keep saying “so what?” until you think you’ve really got to the nub of the change you’re trying to make.
- Be creative. Don’t worry about how you SHOULD do it, find something that reflects and demonstrates what you do.
- Don’t agonise about attribution. It can be really difficult to attribute a change solely to your particular activity. Don’t try too hard to show precisely what part of the change you were responsible for, it’s okay to say “We helped to …” or “We contributed to…”
- Choose a few indicators that are useful to you and others. Make sure you are clear about what you want to measure, and why.
- Not everything needs to be ‘countable’. There’s nothing wrong with taking a more qualitative approach. Case studies and attributed quotes can be really powerful.
- Make use of existing tools. A wide range of tools exist, or you may decide to go ‘freestyle’. Either way, you can use the tools to assist you or to provide inspiration and bright ideas. There are some really simple ideas that you can modify, such as outcomes stars.
- Use other people’s data and statistics. There’s a massive amount of academic and ‘grey’ literature out there, that will almost certainly be relevant to your work. Use it!
- Prevention activities. If your main activity is to prevent something (e.g. drug use), it can be difficult to demonstrate positive impacts. There’s no perfect solution, but try thinking about what would have happened if you weren’t there?
Top Tips for Communicating your Impact
- Engage with different audiences. Different groups look for different kinds of impact information, so bear your audience in mind.
- Provide a context for your work. It may seem obvious to you, but your audience needs to understand the needs or problem your work is trying to address.
- Don’t hide your achievements under a bushel. What is your organisation doing to address an issue; and what difference is it actually making in peoples’ lives? (Don’t forget the second half – that’s what impact is all about).
- Don’t forget about unintended as well as intended consequences. Your best impacts may have never been foreseen at the start of your project. (Sometimes these might be negative, but people may appreciate honest reporting – it will depend on your audience).
- Use numbers and stories. Try to quantify your impact, but qualitative information such as case studies and quotes will add depth and colour and appeal to different audiences.
Additional Resources
Action Hampshire provides bespoke consultancy support and training to help VCSE organisations understand and measure their impact. Please feel free to get in touch to have an initial conversation to see how we might be able to support you! We have particular expertise in supporting Hampshire social enterprise and charity organisations.
The Inspiring Impact website provides free online resources, peer learning networks, and grant funding, so you can plan, understand, and improve your impact. You can visit the Inspiring Impact website by following this link.
NPC has a variety of resources to help organisations demonstrate their social impact, which can be found by following this link. For example, check out their Little Blue Book starter guide via this link for a detailed walkthrough on analysing charities.
The Charity Excellence Framework has a free online impact measurement framework and tools you can use to improve performance, and increase your impact and social value. You can learn more by following this link to the Charity Excellence Framework list of useful links.
The Happiness Pulse is a digital tool to help charities measure how effectively their work is impacting on the happiness and wellbeing of the people they are helping - follow this link to learn more about Happiness Pulse.