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In the world of social impact, impact measurement is a powerful tool. However, for it to truly serve an organisation, the metrics must align with its broader mission and goals. Measuring what matters is crucial for demonstrating value, improving decision-making, and ensuring that your efforts drive meaningful change.
But how do you align these impact metrics with your organisational goals? This article will guide you through that process, helping you choose the right metrics and make the most of your impact measurement efforts.
The first step in aligning your impact metrics is to ensure that they reflect your organisation's mission and vision. These foundational elements define the core purpose of your work and the changes you aim to create. Your impact metrics should serve as indicators of how well you are achieving those goals.
For instance, if your organisation is dedicated to improving mental health in the workplace, key metrics may include employee well-being scores, stress reduction, or job retention rates.
Tip: Review your mission statement regularly, as it can evolve with time and organisational growth. Ensure your impact metrics evolve with it, too.
Once you have a firm grasp on your organisation’s mission and vision, it's essential to translate these into specific, measurable outcomes. Outcomes differ from outputs in that they reflect the profound changes your organisation creates.
For example, outputs might include that participants acquire new job training and skills, while outcomes could focus on the participants moving from being unemployed to employed. But an outcome could also be to reduce people's loneliness, while the output could be for them to participate regularly in social activities.
So, it works for both social and budgetary aspects of impact goals.
Your metrics should be selected based on the most important outcomes you seek to influence. This way, your measurement efforts will give you insights into whether you're driving the desired change.
We always suggest making a Theory of Change, where you start with defining the desired outcomes. That way you can choose output metrics that can inform you continuously of whether or not the participants are moving in a positive direct and towards you having a profound impact on their lives.
Read more about how to set up a Theory of Change
For organisations working in the social impact space, measuring both social and economic value can provide a more comprehensive picture of success. Tools like Social Return on Investment (SROI) and WELLBYs (Wellbeing Adjusted Life Years) allow organisations to quantify the impact of their work on both personal well-being and the economy.
For example, if your intervention seeks to reduce anxiety, WELLBYs can further add value by quantifying how changes in individual anxiety and well-being impact the participants' overall life satisfaction. But if your initiative aims at reducing workplace stress and improve mental health, an SROI-approach would help you calculate not just the immediate improvement in well-being but also the economic savings related to increased productivity and fewer absences. Both methods provide solid methodical foundations and a scientific approach that enables you to see either the social value or the social and economic value of your intervention - and they are great for benchmarking interventions and initiatives.
Read more about using WELLBY and SROI for benchmarking.
Tip: Choose metrics that can resonate with different stakeholders, from investors to beneficiaries, as each may have a different view of what "success" looks like.
Impact measurement isn’t just about reporting impact. It's also a valuable tool for organisational learning. Metrics that are aligned with your goals should offer insights into what works, what doesn't, and where improvements can be made. That way, you'll be able to increase your impact, help more people better and ensure a lasting impact for both people and society. This requires a feedback loop where the data you collect informs your strategy, ensuring continuous improvement.
For example, if data shows that your employment program helps participants find jobs but doesn’t lead to long-term retention, this insight can prompt you to adjust the program to focus more on ongoing support or helping the participants gain useful knowledge that can easy the transition into employment.
This requires continuous impact management, so you can track the participants' progress on-goingly. Make sure you have a setup that is as efficient as possible, as it will otherwise end up eating both time and ressources that could have be used elsewhere.
Read how to master impact assessment
Data-driven decision-making is a key benefit of aligning impact metrics with organisational goals. When your data reflects the core purpose of your work, it helps you make strategic decisions about resource allocation, program expansion, or potential areas for growth.
For instance, organisations can compare the impact of various interventions using SROI or WELLBYs to decide which interventions are most cost-effective and impactful, but it might also be that you through data can see that an individual participant is not showing a positive change, and therefore you allocate extra time to help him/her a bit more.
Lastly, aligning your metrics with organisational goals means considering the needs and perspectives of your stakeholders. Engage your team, funders, partners and beneficiaries in conversations about what success looks like to them. Their input will help ensure that your impact metrics reflect both internal priorities and external expectations.
For instance, it might be that you have a collaboration with the municipality, while also having an impact investor. These two might have different views on the most valuable outcomes and impact of your intervention.
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