Meaningful impact measurement for the charity sector: help!
How do we share impact measurement in a world of time constraints, low resource and looming deadlines from funders when we’re at or above capacity? I have shared three thoughts from our Grapevine world that may extinguish the fear and spark some curiosity.
Time constraints
We learned from Joe Roberson’s brilliant training about how to write week notes in only 30 minutes. Simply put: notes about what you have been doing at work this week. Our team gets together remotely every Friday for 30 minutes to let our creative juices flow. That’s where this blog you’re reading now was born! 5 minutes of outlining our title and subheadings, 15 minutes of freewriting, and 10 minutes to edit. Showing up collectively holds us to account and there’s always a sense of togetherness doing this in a group to the sound of tapping keyboards and obligatory barking dogs. Learning to write them in just 30 minutes is a skill that will come with time when you commit to showing up to build on it. Once you’ve honed this, you have a fresh weekly tool to share on your social media platform or to include as a link to 1:1 invitations with key people in your field and even send to your funder when the time is right. It’s also a nice touch to include a link to your latest blog in your out-of-office response. 30 minutes a week is a reasonable commitment with a worthwhile reward of helping your readers to build a picture of the unique and powerful way that you work.
The goings on that don’t always show up in statistics.
For a written version of Joe’s training you can read his blog here.
Low resource
When people talk about resource they usually mean money. In community organising, money is not our language of resource. People-power is our resource. People have skills and passions that they are excited to share if they know that it will work towards their goal of tackling a social injustice meaningful to them. In our case, our mission is to end isolation and marginalisation. We use a tool developed by Marshall Ganz called public narrative: a leadership practice of using personal values to galvanise others into action through storytelling. A story structure with the power to motivate people into action. Stories of injustice can quite easily evoke emotion and tears, but this doesn’t necessarily lead to action. Only evoking tears can also be triggering for the individual sharing their story. Not powerful. In contrast, our public narrative uses techniques like the story of self, story of us, and story of now. Intentional tools for the listener to empathise with the experience even if they haven’t directly experienced it themself. We always end with an extremely clear and concise call to action for the listener to take on the issue. These narratives can be adapted for any use, from a 1:1 over a tea sat on the floor of a gurdwara, to spoken word through megaphones on a walk and talk to key leaders and community members. Public narrative has the power to share impact that can be adapted to any person’s experience of the world.
As part of our 2023 restructure we are responding to calls for training on organising practices and will be launching this in mid-March 2023. This training will be delivered for free and is on an invitation basis only. If you are interested in being considered then please email me. You are interested for a reason and I want to hear it! email sgreener@grapevinecovandwarks.org
In the meantime, you can sign up to free online training with Act Build Change for guidance on public narrative.
For an excellent example of public narrative, you can watch this video of Ljeoma’s story.
Be radical with your funder
I have spoken before about how funders and commissioners can hold a monopoly of power that undermines the power of the community that they are funding. But this doesn’t need to be the case. Hold that you are the experts in the work you are doing, not your funder. Whilst they are enabling you in a monetary capacity to carry out the work, don’t lose that this is ultimately your work, not theirs. They will have their impact measurement criteria you will need to meet and that’s okay. It’s also okay for you to tell them when their impact measurement may be missing crucial insights that your organisation values at its core. Let’s take an old-fashioned example: maybe your funder asks for statistics on the number of people you have ‘reached’ and their measurement of success is for that statistic to be as high as possible. Perhaps, contrary to this, in your organisation you value the relationships you build with people to enable them to become leaders in making change that continues this legacy beyond the completion of your funding. For you, 10 people continuing this legacy is more powerful than 100 people who have simply spoken to you over a cup of tea and done nothing more with your work ever again. It’s okay to report to your funder as they have asked, but don’t be afraid to break those statistics down into the power and legacy you are leaving. Your funders can learn and grow from you. Not only will this support them in supporting you, it may also shape how they measure charities in the future.
A recap- we have looked at unique ways of sharing impact measurement with the world from week notes and storytelling to thinking outside the box with your funder. It’s an ordinary week in the life of Grapevine that we hope might be inspiring you too!
