Measuring what matters and showing impact in a meaningful way
Demonstrating Value offers a simple process and helpful resources to enable community-based organizations to use information and data more effectively for management, planning and to show value and impact. It was designed by community for community through a collaborative process that brought together diverse social enterprises to develop and pilot a framework and tools between 2007 and 2009. The initiative was developed as a response to the frustration and pressure to measure impact.
Demonstrating Value is part of an evolving landscape of initiatives that are advancing methods for evaluation and impact measurement in Canada and internationally. DV complements methods that seek to go more deeply into social impact measurement, for instance that aim to unify practices and indicators, and those that monetize results. Our focus has been in creating a starting point for many community-based organization to measure what matters, tell their story and demonstrate their value in a meaningful way. Measurement needs are viewed holistically, recognizing that business, organizational and impact measures all create a picture of value.
Community-based organizations can use the following activity guides to define/refine what is important to measure and how to engage audiences with data by developing 'snapshots' - Impact Reports, Dashboards and Infographics:
- PERFORMANCE AND IMPACT MEASUREMENT: An Activity Guide to Improving your Practices
- DEVELOPING A SNAPSHOT: An Activity Guide to Communicating Value and Impact
Other resources and tools available on www.demonstratingvalue.org.
The following report describes how the framework was developed: