I want to provide a summary of Impact Management, not Impact Measurement because its not only about measuring data
Measuring Social Impact Can Help Foster a Stronger European Social Economy
By Leonora Buckland & Lisa Hehenberger
Stanford Social Innovation Review
May 12, 2021
Even when organizations want to measure impact there is often not enough money to spend on monitoring, evaluation, and learning, which can be relatively costly. This is especially true if it comes at the expense of delivering frontline services. In many instances, donors and public sector commissioners are demanding impact measurement but are still unwilling to pay for it.
If organizations do conduct social impact measurement, it is generally at the level of measuring outputs (the number of people attending job training programs, for example) rather than outcomes (the number of people who attended job training who were able to get a well-paying job).
Even worse, the number of social sector organizations who do impact assessment ‘by the gut,’ or with anecdotal, qualitative data is still surprisingly high. As a result, impact measurement has been patchy and inconsistent and has generated data of dubious quality which cannot be easily compared.
It is essential that the impact management process empowers stakeholders and beneficiaries and is part of a multi-stakeholder, collaborative, partnership approach by funders and commissioners, where social economy organizations accept and are not afraid to account for impact risk and negative impact. As the quality and relevance of impact data, evaluation, and reporting increases among social economy organizations, it will naturally lead to increased collaboration and data-sharing and become a source of pride rather than a burden.
The social economy—including its organizations, practices, and tools—will be a pivotal lever in achieving a just transition, not only through the implementation of its activities, but also through its experience of measuring and managing impact. For these policies to channel funding to the social economy, the sector needs to be able to show that the public sector gets its “money’s worth.”
