Outcomes and evaluationProve whatchanged.
Impact is proven over time, not measured once.
Every number has a source.
- The number in the report
- The definition it counts by
- The records it counts
- The moment each record was made
Outcomes and evaluation are about data provenance. Every number a board or a funder reads should trace back to where it came from: which records, counted by which definition, entered by whom and when.
A number that can be traced can be defended. One that can't is an opinion with a decimal point.
From activity to impact
The best organizations measure outcomes. Some, especially membership, association and advocacy groups, measure activities instead. Even there, the outcome is within reach.
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Activities
Testimony given, legislators met, members mobilized.
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Outcome
The law changes.
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Impact
What the change does for the people it reaches.
Activities are worth counting: they are how the work gets managed. They are not what the work is for.
The same measures, year after year.
The best organizations measure the same data for years. One year is a snapshot. Year after year, counted the same way, is a trend a board can steer by and a funder can believe.
That only holds while the definition holds still. Change what a measure counts and every year before it stops comparing. A new funder's question is a reason to add a measure, rarely a reason to redefine one.
What is measured can be managed.
But no organization should drown in measurement. A form no one reads, a field filled in once a year for one report, a dashboard with sixty tiles: each costs staff time and proves nothing.
The best data are collected as part of a required process or normal operations, in the moments the work already records.
- Intake.
- Attendance.
- The case note.
- Discharge.
Measurement that rides on the work is complete, on time, and there again next year without anyone having to remember to collect it.
Put the barometer in front of everyone.
The few measures that show whether things are changing belong where everyone can see them, every week, not in a report that comes out once a year.
Give people responsibility only for what they can change. Never measure anyone on someone else's output.
An intake worker answers for how quickly a family is seen, not for where that family is a year later. A program director answers for the program's outcomes. The board answers for whether the mission is moving.
A full impact dashboard built for a fictional treatment foster care agency: switch between the program, board and funder views of the same data and watch what appears, what disappears, and the governance reason it was held back. Every number in it is synthetic. Open the live demo
Other practice areas
Strategy and governance
Align the board and the plan
A plan with owners and measures, and a board built to hold it.
Risk, compliance, and privacy
Protect what you hold
The annual risk assessment, chaired and finished. The remediation list, owned.
Finance and accounting
Make the numbers work
Board packets that answer questions. Reporting your board can act on.
Technology and AI
Put technology to work
Systems, data and AI where they pay for themselves, and custom software when nothing on the market fits.
The conversation costs nothing.
Thirty minutes. Bring whatever is hardest right now.