Measuring Impact Using the Tools in Your Toolbox
Measuring Impact Using the Tools in Your Toolbox
By Jonathan Weber-Mendez, Director of Development
"You can't manage what you can't measure."
-Peter Drucker
Nonprofits operate in service of their missions, but how do they know they are successful? And how do they prove impact and ROI (return on investment) to their donors? This blog explores ways nonprofits can demonstrate program success using the tools they already have to grow their mission impact.
Before discussing how to measure impact, let’s briefly touch on WHY to measure impact. The first and most crucial reason to emphasize impact measurement in an organization is to do it for for the people and communities served. Communities rely on nonprofits to fill the gaps and meet community needs. Gaps and unmet needs must be quantified. If there are no measures, the nonprofit sector and the community cannot identify what is needed.
The second reason has to do with building trust. At a time in its history when the nonprofit sector is seeing declining levels of trust (evidenced by this survey, reflecting a 4 percent decrease in trust in the nonprofit sector in the past year alone), being able to prove that an organization does what it says it will do is vital to rebuilding trust and ensuring sustainability. However, without measurements, there is no way to prove an organization did what it said it would do.
The last reason to focus on impact measurement is resource allocation. Nonprofit resources are limited, and if there are no measures demonstrating the impact of an organization’s programs, how can that organization know how to distribute its resources or what to ask donors for?
Measuring impact can be defined as objectively quantifying the change your programs create in communities or people. The key phrase is “objectively quantifying the change.” See, measuring impact is not about counting the quantity of service delivery. Statements like “we served 100 people” are program OUTPUTS, not impact measures. Impact measures are program OUTCOMES that quantify change, not service delivery. Understanding the difference between OUTPUTS and OUTCOMES is critical to developing strong impact measures.
The primary tool for developing impact measurements is the logic model. A logic model is a method to theorize the chain of events that will lead to a specific change or result in a person or community. Below is an example of a logic model:
While this is a relatively simple example of a logic model, dependent on the program or service type, logic models are often complex. For more information on building a logic model, go to the Write On Fundraising shop and download Logic Model: A guide for developing equitable & inclusive program measurements.
Once a logic model is used to develop strong program outcomes, it is time to identify the appropriate measurement tools. For the reading class example above, the most common measurement tool would be a test to measure reading grade level. However, a test may not always be applicable for many programs or services. Here is a short list of other types of outcome measurement tools:
After identifying the right tool, the only thing left today is measuring the program’s success.
The last note on measuring program success is to always center the people and communities served by the nonprofit in the measurements and narratives shared with donors and the public at large. Nonprofits exist to serve people and communities, and statistics and data should never upstage those people and communities in the stories nonprofits tell about their services.