Common Impact Data Standard Resources

How the Common Impact Data Standard was developed

The Common Impact Data Standard was released in collaboration with Mark Fox at the Centre for Social Services Engineering at the University of Toronto.

To create this standard, the Common Approach consulted with experts and aligned with other leading standards, such as the Impact Management Project (now housed at Impact Frontiers), which itself consulted with over 2000 impact professionals.

Following the norms identified by the Impact Management Project, the Common Impact Data Standard has defined the necessary objects and relationships to represent the who, what, how much, contribution and risk of impact. In addition to these five dimensions, the Common Impact Data Standard includes information on inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes (as would be in a program logic model or theory of change) to describe how the impact occurs.

How the Common Impact Data Standard relates to other data standards

The Common Impact Data Standard has been built with an eye to re-using and augmenting existing work.

Common Approach commissioned Dr. Gillian Kerr to prepare a white paper to situate the Common Impact Data Standard within existing data standards and identifying priorities for aligning with prevailing standards as we prepared for Version 2.

The Common Impact Data Standard and Impact Management Norms

To represent impact, the Common Impact Data Standard represents the Impact Management norms five dimensions of impact: what, who, how much, contribution and risk. These dimensions of impact ensure a complete articulation of the impact of those outcomes.

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”.