Perhaps the need is to better define the questions that impact
measurement should aim to answer. These would involve applying
an ‘impact lens’ to the business model, systems and processes of
an organisation and might include:
• Are you clear about who your target clients are? Do you
reach them?
• What is your understanding of your clients’ needs? How do they
differ for different clients? How do you gather feedback on clients’ use
of your services – their experience, how their needs are changing?
• Are your products and services and the way in which they are
delivered the most effective way to achieve the outcomes you
want to achieve?
• What are the risks your clients/beneficiaries face? How does
your work mitigate these? How might you exacerbate these?
• How consistent is the delivery of your products and services:
how clear are front line staff about what is important in what
they do daily to deliver impact? How do you manage what
matters for your clients?
• How does your organisational culture, performance
in financial management, resources are needed for impact
measurement and management. Whilst this needs to be
proportionate to the organisation, funders should be open
to funding such costs as an investment in helping build
strong, sustainable, high impact organisations.
• Focus on information that will guide management. Are
there simpler things that organisations can and should be doing –
such as gathering improved client feedback – that will help them
reach the people they seek to serve, build a better understanding
of how their services create value and improve their practice?
• Build peer learning and bottom-up collaboration.
Support practitioners to work together to share
practice and experience. Collaboration between similar
organisations may be a user-friendly way to build
standards, indicators and benchmarks based on real-life
experience of front line organisations. Sector organisations
such as NPC, Social Enterprise UK, Big Society Capital
and GIIN could play a role in supporting this process and
ensuring impact measurement is useful for all stakeholders.
Beyond these messages the results of the survey sound a note
of optimism in highlighting the continuing uptake of impact
measurement, the broad recognition of value for improving
practice, and the extent to which many organisations are
already using impact information to better serve their clients.
Many challenges remain, but perhaps the key is to maintain a
focus on the people who we seek to benefit, to ensure that their
voices are heard and that there is ‘downward accountability’
as well as ‘upward accountability’ to donors or investors. For
all stakeholders impact measurement ultimately should be
driving better decision making towards this end.
THE ESSAY
—
MOVING FORWARD
Whilst highlighting the progress that has been made in impact
measurement, this survey suggests a need and opportunity
to respond to the experience of front line organisations, and
to see measurement as one part of the process of managing
to maximise impact. There is a call for g reater consistency,
simplicity and less jargon around impact measurement and
ensuring approaches are grounded in operational realities to
enable organisations to learn, improve and be more effective
in responding to clients’ needs and wants.
We highlight five suggestions for how this can be done:
• Make impact measurement useful. Ensure
expectations and approaches are proportional to the form
and stage of development of the organisation, and driven
by what is useful. Any tool is only as good as the extent to
which it meets the needs of a specific organisational context.
Resist the drive to bring everything back to monetary terms
and focus on finding indicators that relate to real issues on
the ground and have value for organisations.
• Make language user-friendly. The term ‘impact
measurement’ – much like impact investing – is too flat and
leads people to make comparisons between fundamentally
different product/service offerings that serve different
purposes for users. Further, the technocratic language of
impact measurement can be alienating. Efforts need to be
made to simplify the language used so that information about
who you reach, how you serve them and whether they benefit
becomes seen as a normal part of managing a good business.
• Support capacity building of front line
organisations. Just as any good business invests resources
management, incentives and messages support your focus on
social value, and how much do your staff understand about
what you do and why?
• What information do you have from clients and staff exploring
if things are working well or identifying opportunities to
improve products, services or the systems for delivery? Are staff
rewards and incentives oriented towards impact creation?
• How is a client perspective part of your board’s focus? Does
the board consider the impact of decisions for clients? Does the
board monitor a range of data relating to who is reached, the
quality of service delivery, client feedback and outcomes?
• How much are the needs of your clients and the benefits you
seek to deliver core to the business model of your organisation?
Does the future success of your organisation depend on being
able to deliver sustainable impact and the success of your clients?
These questions could be aligned with the due diligence funders
perform so that all are agreed on the fundamental questions that are
relevant to an organisation focused on impact creation. Then comes
the question of how to measure results and what success looks like. ■
PPQ | 53