Issues & Ideas

10 Ways to Show Your Impact: Part 2

In Part 1 of “10 Ways to Show Your Impact”, we discussed five things you can do to show your value including:

1) be as clear as possible in describing your vision, mission, and strategies,
2) describe what differentiates you,
3) describe and show evidence of the value you create from the perspective of all your stakeholders,
4) tell your story and the stories of those you work with, and

10 Ways to Show Your Impact: Part 1

Community-based organizations are in a tough position: they work tirelessly towards goals that will have positive social or environmental impacts and they know they create a lot of value for the communities they serve –  but, this value is hard to express and recognition from the community is hard to come by. The value created by community-based groups doesn’t get captured very well by standard financial statements because conventional accounting methods do not consider value beyond the financial returns.

Is measuring impact possible?

When you hear the word “impact”, what comes to mind? While your first thoughts may include that kickboxing class you just joined, it is it is also true that the term “impact” is often used loosely to encompass any type of reporting about the social or environmental mission of an organization. In the world of evaluation, this word has a much ‘tighter’ meaning:  Impact is the tracking of long-term outcomes, controlling for external influences, or using randomized control trials to prove that the outcomes are attributable to a particular organization’s efforts.

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