As one respondent put it: “Impact measurement information is a great
motivator for the staff team, validating their work and helping them make the
case for changes they see as important to improve services provided.”
Notably, only 28% of respondents stated that impact
information was crucial to their board, with some larger
organisations for example establishing Impact Committees as subcommittees of the board. These can play a useful role in analysing
impact information and using this to help shape business strategy.
Almost half of organisations responding produce an annual
social impact report; around a fifth of these are externally verified.
This likely reflects the larger size of organisations responding.
Almost half of the organisations thought periodic external
verification or assurance would be valuable for reporting to
external stakeholders and slightly fewer thought it would be of
value internally; just over one-third did not think that this would
be useful or were unsure. However, the cost of external verification
was seen as a major barrier. There were also fears about standards
being imposed from outside.
Consolidation of tools and approaches: The last decade has
seen the growth of specialist organisations and an infrastructure
to support impact measurement (much of it building on long
established approaches
for monitoring and
ONLY
evaluation), but many
practitioners find
the range of options
confusing. There
was a call for more
standardisation and
consolidation. As one
FIND IMPACT
respondent put it: “A
simple and consistent
MEASUREMENT EASY
method of evaluation needs
to be introduced and not
every Tom, Dick and Harry coming up with their own version and trying to
convince the world their one is best.” Others highlighted the need to
support organisations in selecting the most appropriate impact
measurement approaches and tools that fit with the operational
reality of organisations: “There is a huge burden to find the right
2%
produce an annual social impact report;
around a fifth of these are externally
verified.
measurement tool for the organisation and context, which means that it can fall
lower down on the priority list as it’s hard to achieve.”
There have been some notable (and well-accessed) resources
developed to support this process, for example in Inspiring Impact
(www.inspiringimpact.org), the ‘Prove/Improve’ website (www.
proveandimprove.org) and Big Society Capital’s Outcomes Matrix
(www.bigsocietycapital.com/impact-matrix). However, it seems
that more is needed in this area to fit tools with purpose and
capacity, and to provide independent guidance on how to select
the appropriate approach for the organisation that is seeking to
measure impact.
The terminology and technical focus of impact measurement
can also be alienating. Several respondents highlighted the need
to build the capacity of charities and social enterprises to be able
to use the available tools. There was a call for “impact measurement
costs to be allowed within funding bids” and to focus on developing
the impact measurement skills of charity and social enterprise
staff “rather than growing an industry of consultants retaining
knowledge and expertise”. That is not to say specialists are
not needed. Nearly 40% of respondents had received external
technical assistance to develop an impact assessment framework.
However, only 2% find impact measurement easy. For the
majority (85%) it is challenging but worthwhile and for 11% too
complex and difficult.
THE ESSAY
—
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF IMPACT
MEASUREMENT
Whilst we see relatively high levels of awareness, recognition of
importance, collection and use of impact data, several challenges
were made about current approaches to impact measurement.
These do not claim to be representative of the views of charities
and social enterprises in general, rather they were raised as
comments by survey respondents. Our aim is to share these
voices as a reflection of frontline perspectives that we believe are
a constructive contribution to the debate and development of
impact measurement and management.
Almost half of organisations responding
Need for Proportionality: Often the literature on impact
measurement fails to distinguish between what’s appropriate for
different types of organisation and different stakeholders. For
example, a community enterprise may have a very different need
to measure its impact compared to a large-scale charity delivering
a commissioned service that claims better outcomes or a social
business operating at scale to tackle a specific social problem that has
raised significant investment. As one community enterprise put it:
“We are a successful small social enterprise but we do not have the resource
to commit too much time to measuring our impact. We have no investors nor
shareholders and the community we serve do not ask any questions regarding
social impact.”
This begs the question: what is the role of impact measurement
for this organisation? Getting clear on motivation – why an
organisation wants to measure its impact – is an important first
step in deciding what makes sense to do given the form and stage
of development of the organisation.
PPQ | 49