Measuring social impact is becoming an increasingly important area for non-profits to measure the impact of their programs in addressing social challenges. In as much as it is an important exercise for organizations, measuring impact can present significant challenges. For the most part, measuring social impact involves measuring complex elements while using tools that may fall short to capture precisely what is needed.

The following seven step guide proposed by InFocus helps to approach the impact measurement process in a structured manner;

1. Define Your Approach

This is the first step of the impact measurement process. Before you get to data collection and analysis, take time to work out your overall measuring impact approach. It is at this formative stage that the organization ought to create a vision for impact measurement – what is your organizations overall aim and purpose for measuring impact? Defining your vision at this level helps to establish the Why which provides direction and clarity of all measurement activities to be undertaken.

With your Why now in place, the next step is to decide on the overall approach of how to measure impact. Choosing between monitoring, evaluation and research or a combination of the three. The decision on which approach to use will depend on resources and expertise available.

2. Decide where to focus

Using Programme Theory, design a blueprint mapping out how you believe your programmes lead to social impact and the role of external actors. Having a ‘blueprint’ of how you assume your activities will lead to social change can help with prioritization in combination with our guide here on how to prioritize what to measure. This involves looking at your programme theory and thinking through why you need the data from your impact measurement (i.e. for learning and improving or fundraising), and the scope of your impact measurement (i.e. whether to focus on a particular target audience or programme).

3. Develop Indicators

This is the stage where you get into the details of what and develop indicators – specific information showing whether something has taken place and to what extent. Indicators are key in clarifying and guiding your impact measurement. For instance, indicators could show the number of businesses opened in certain geography over a specific period of time after an entrepreneurship empowerment programme was rolled out.

A good place to begin is by starting by exploring indicators that are already being used by other organizations. You can decide to customize and apply them in your context, or use them as inspiration do develop bespoke indicators.

4. Plan Your Data Collection

With your indicators in place, it is now time to decide on the methods you will use to collect data, and also plan whom you will collect data from.

We have a variety of methods you can use to collect data. Some of the methods you can use include face-to-face interview, telephone interview, funnel questions, etc.

The following pointers will help you settle on the one to use;

  • Do you want to use validated or custom tools?
  • What capacity do you have to use different methods?
  • Will you use more creative data collection methods?
  • Will you be collecting against qualitative or quantitative indicators?
  • Are there tools you could use that would use more participatory approaches?

5. Develop Data Collection Tools

At this stage you develop the specific tools you will use in collecting data. Questionnaires are usually the most commonly used tools for impact measurement. A key consideration in coming up with questions for your questionnaire is avoiding bias. Obviously, it is not possible to completely eliminate bias, but careful and critical planning, design, and deployment can help reduce bias. You can use existing questions and questionnaires to see if they apply to your context. Alternatively, you can develop your own questionnaire since it is unlikely that you will find all of the questions you need from existing resources.

6. Collect and Manage Data

Armed with your indicators and data collection tools, the next step is about using these tools to effectively and efficiently collect and manage data. Consider the following steps in deploying data collection tools;

  • Training your staff – ensure responsible collection of high quality foods.
  • Piloting tools – pilot your tools for relevance and effectiveness.
  • Deploying tools – Thinking through, and planning, when and how to deploy your data collection tools.

Using Your Data

This is the final step and it covers learning from the data to improve activities and share your results for marketing and fundraising. The following five steps are recommended o get to the point where you can interpret and learn from your data:

  1. Review learning questions and indicators
  2. Select tools for analysis (e.g. Excel)
  3. Prepare your data
  4. Display your data (e.g. in charts and graphs)
  5. Interpret and draw conclusions from your data.

REF: INFOCUS