Common Foundations resources
Why the Common Foundations and for Whom?
The Common Foundations reflect a minimum standard of impact measurement—not a gold standard. This is intentional. Community is the key ingredient to successful standards. In order to develop the community of active users behind a standard, users must be able to come on board and meet the standard. To make it possible to come on board, a standard must meet people where they are at.
Who are the Common Foundations for?
- For social purpose organizations that are not yet doing impact measurement—a great starting point
- For social purpose organizations that are already doing impact measurement—to affirm they meet a minimum standard of impact measurement
- For funders—a minimum standard for how to do impact measurement without prescribing a particular tool or approach
- For organizations with tools and approaches to impact measurement (or who are developing these)—provides a foundational floor upon which to build further
Definitions of Key Terms
The Impact Management Project glossary is a great source for the various definitions of terms frequently used in reference to impact measurement.
There are some terms for which the Common Approach has a specific definition, including “impact”, “impact measurement”, “outputs”, and “outcomes”.
Common Foundations Videos Archive
From Common Foundations Version 1.0: Dive deeper and watch the videos on each of the 5 essential practices of impact measurement.
Thank you to our partners at Social Enterprise Institute for the videos.
