It’s the start of 2020, a great time to make resolutions, for yourself and for your organization. If you run or support a mission-driven organization, you may have resolved to better measure your impact this year.
Many organizations start with highlighting their numbers—their outreach. How many lives have you touched with your work? How many people have you served? But those numbers do not capture or define impact … they are only the start of your impact journey.
Sachi Shenoy, Upaya’s Chief Impact Officer & Co-Founder likes to think of these outreach numbers as the “what”… but in this webinar, she encourages organizations to ask, “so what?”
Sachi recently sat down with SoPact’s Founder and President, Unmesh Sheth to discuss impact measurement and the importance of moving beyond outreach to assess the true impact of ones work.
Key Takeaways
Be Systematic: Use a Logic Model
A well thought out logic model can help you very systematically break down your intervention and think through the cause and effect of what your organization does.
A sample logic model template
2. Define quantitative metrics
Quantitative metrics give organizations an idea of whether or not they’re on track towards their mission. To track new job creation, for instance, Upaya records how many new jobs each company in our portfolio creates each quarter.
To track progress out of poverty, however, we measure the increase in income that this new job provides, and then observe what this increased income helps the person do: improve the condition of their house? Eat more food? Purchase more assets? Send their children to school?
Upaya’s logic model includes outputs and outcomes that are measured using quantitative metrics.
3. Measure the depth of your impact
For Upaya, it is critical that we do not just count the number of jobs created, but that we also assess whether the jobs are creating change. These jobs must pay fairly, pay well, be dignified, and move people out of poverty.
We conduct regular surveys with the individuals who receive these jobs to measure the extent to which the jobs and increased income are having the desired impact.
Upaya asks jobholders what their newly increased income will help them achieve to understand the impact the jobs are having on their lives.
Visit Upaya’s Impact Dashboard to see all of the outputs and outcomes we measure. You can also learn more about how we collect data and measure impact in this blog post by Upaya’s Senior Associate, Daphne Delaski.
Image: pexels.com
