| How do I use impact information? | Impact data will give you insights that you can use to hone your strategy and manage your organization's limited resources. |
Many public interest organizations have long squirmed under the label “nonprofit”. The label defines them by something they aren’t; it implies they are lacking something fundamental. That’s why many organizations have started to embrace labels like “social impact group”. It’s an effort to put their social and environmental mission front and centre.
The re-labelling is an important shift, and it highlights the unique intellectual challenge that comes with running a successful mission driven organization: how do you really measure success? Frankly, it’s easier to tell if a business is making money than if an impact organization is having a positive social impact.
Measuring impact is tricky, and that’s one of many reasons effective social impact work requires clever, attentive leaders.
The same way that profit-oriented organizations track and report on profits, impact-oriented organizations need to track and report on impact.
Impact is more than performance. It’s more than the number of reports you produced or the amount of money you raised. Impact is the change that your work is creating in the world.
Reporting on impact is more complicated than simply counting how much money comes in and how much money goes out. It takes extra work, and usually involves looking backwards just as you are being pulled into the next project, campaign, or client.
When you are desperate to move forward, pausing to review your impact can feel counterproductive.
It’s not.
Good leadership depends on impact information. A board can’t do its job properly if it doesn’t understand an organization’s impact, and neither can leaders.
You need insight into your impact to know if your strategy is working and to make smart decisions about how to allocate your resources (money and people).
Impact information is for the team, too. Staff and volunteers are doing the work day in and day out. They deserve to know how their efforts influence the world around them.
Communities also need to be part of conversations about impact. Social impact organizations should be responsible to the communities they represent, meaning organizations need to do more than just broadcast their impact. The community should have an opportunity to share information back with organizations — they have unique insight and perspectives that organizations need to hear to succeed.
Paying attention to impact helps you learn.
Bad impact measurement is cherry picking the stats that make you feel good. Impact analysis should be a leadership exercise, not a marketing tactic.
Good impact measurement means you observe and listen a lot before you start to tell your impact story. Most importantly, it means you use what you learn to strengthen your strategy, plan your budget, and organize your team.
Impact information doesn’t just reveal the influence you’ve had on the world. It influences what you do and how you do it.
Mentioning “impact” can trigger eye-rolls in the nonprofit sector. The word is sometimes used by people who want to focus only on short-term, quantifiable results. Whether it’s cynical or just an effort to make overwhelming problems feel manageable, “impact measurement” can be used to justify superficial effort. The same is true for a lot of tools, though.
As imperfect as impact and impact measurement can be, the alternatives are worse.
If we don’t look at the effect our actions have, we can’t know if we are actually having a positive effect. We can’t learn; we can’t grow; we can’t make this work easier for the people who follow in our footsteps.
At the same time, it’s important to resist the temptation to only measure what is easy and to focus on vanity metrics.
When we take time to look at the effect our actions have had, we really start to understand our world and our work.
We learn.
We grow.
This is how we succeed — not just one project or one organization at a time, but the entire sector. Because we aren’t here to earn a profit. We are here to create social impact.
A: Use impact information to hone your strategy and manage your resources. If you want help, book a consultation session with Entremission. The free consultation offer for subscribers of The Organizer has ended, but there are still a limited number of discounted sessions available for nonprofit organizations. We can explore any impact-related question or challenge you choose in an hour.
The Organizer is a newsletter for people working to create equitable and sustainable communities. Whether you are part of a nonprofit, a charity, or a social enterprise, this newsletter is for you.
Each edition, we explore one aspect of social impact work. We answer a common “How do I …?” question, and we tell you about a tool that will help make your work a little easier. Subscribe for free at Entremission.com.