Introducing So What? An Impact Measurement Toolkit

Designers and the vast majority of businesses rarely set out with bad intentions. Facebook started out with the innocuous hope of bringing college kids together. “Ten years ago, you know, I was just trying to help connect people at colleges and a few schools.” Zuckerberg said. Now Facebook is being accused of mishandling hate speech, profiting off of the spread of misinformation, and inadvertently supporting the meddling of foreign countries in American elections. With our good hearts, passionate talking points, and sexy ideas, designers and businesses can be blind to the unintended consequences of their work.

It may be perfect for some users, but exclude or harm others. We can make something that should work, based on science and precedent and research but in reality, it doesn’t actually make a difference or worse, it’s harmful. More than ever we need to be intentional about the change we want to create, systematic in developing a theory for how we intend to get there and then rigorous in how we will measure whether or not we’re really doing it.

In a new world in which our cultural defaults and good intentions are being exposed as being harmful, naive or exclusionary, especially to Black, Indigenous, and people of color, it’s even more important that we examine our own thinking and have rigorous methods for sticking to fact versus feeling.

Most toolkits focus on how to find and test the right ideas, The So What? toolkit allows us to understand how much change can be credited once those ideas are actually in the world. It is a practice that can benefit non-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, practitioners, and students alike. The right impact measurement strategy helps us understand the value of our work at a deeper level. Impact measurement can lead to hard facts that can be used for fundraising, marketing, and learning purposes. At Airbel, nearly all of our projects undergo rigorous scientific testing, with So What?, we’ve made the process accessible. You will be able to identify the signals of your impact, create a method for capturing those signals, and leverage a simple framework for evaluating your approach to impact measurement.

This toolkit only takes about 30 minutes to complete, and is ideal for: Non-profits and social enterprises launching a new program or initiative; For-profits launching a new product or service; Student projects; Practicing professionals that can use this to create a strategy for measuring the impact of a project.

The So What? toolkit is a downloadable PDF that is organized into five distinct parts: Goal, Picture Success, Identify, Capture, and Evaluate.

The toolkit opens by providing a method for defining your project’s goal and the “So What?”, or intention, behind it. Next, you’ll work to define what success looks like for your project, and break down the implications of that success.

After you’ve defined the project’s goal and intended outcomes, the toolkit walks you through a process for determining the key identifiers of the change you want to make, along with ways to capture and assess that change.

Finally, you’ll evaluate your strategy, and complete an Impact Measurement Strategy canvas to share with your team.

The So What? toolkit is available on a pay-what-you-want basis on the Reginald platform. Download today, and spread the word! So What? is a living document, so we would appreciate any feedback and stories of how you’ve used the tool.