Reflections from working with the Newfoundland Labrador Social Enterprise Fund

The Newfoundland Labrador Social Enterprise Network are now in their second year as members of the Pathfinder Pilot. This network promotes social innovation, strengthens social enterprises, and develops the social finance ecosystem in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Participating in the Pathfinder Pilot aligned with one of the network’s goals. Their project plan states that “the network members will benefit from the development of a framework for improved data collection and indicator development to help better develop social finance and capacity building strategies, assess investment readiness, engage public and private investors, and leverage resources.” The seven network members are the Centre for Social Enterprise – Memorial University, End Homelessness St. John’s, Food First NL, Newfoundland & Labrador Federation of Co-operatives, Community Sector Council Newfoundland & Labrador, Stella’s Circle and Choices for Youth.

What is the Pathfinder Pilot? The goal of the Pathfinder Pilot is to see how adopting all four Common Approach Standards alters the process and outcomes of impact measurement for social purpose organizations (SPOs), both individually and within a network of related organizations. The first and current stage of this process is supporting network members in adopting the Common Foundations and the Common Impact Data Standard. You can learn more about the Pathfinder Pilot here.

Since the launch of the network Pilot, Common Approach has offered continuing support through regular check-in meetings with the network coordinator and meetings as needed with network members to support their progress. We thank Mariana Jiménez Ojeda, previously of the Center for Social Enterprise, for her work as network coordinator during the earlier stages of the process, Gillian Morrissey for her interim leadership, and are now delighted to work with Nancy Leung in the network coordinator role.

Learning through doing has been a hallmark of the network’s first two years, not only for the members but for Common Approach and the Pathfinder Pilot. The following reflects on some important lessons learned and insights gained in this process and how they’ll be applied going forward.

All members of the network who wanted to participate after the initial interview stage of the Pathfinder Pilot were ultimately able to formally sign their participation and data-sharing agreements. What was unanticipated was the timelines from interview to signing, which ranged between member organizations from a couple of weeks to multiple months. A key variable was obtaining data sharing approval, a process whose length was determined by the governance models of individual member organizations. In designing data sharing for the Pilot, the focus was the technical aspects and implementation. We had not fully considered the governance implications in the Pilot’s design or in selecting Pathfinder Pilot networks.

Our focus on the technical had put organizations into an imaginary bubble where a level of uniformity in approval processes—or at least timelines—was assumed. Working with the network popped this bubble and allowed us to gather insight into the approval timelines of larger governance models.

The network’s anchor member, the Centre for Social Enterprise at Memorial University (CSE), offered insight into the governance models of larger institutions such as universities. CSE was created at Memorial University as a collaboration between the Faculty of Business Administration, the School of Social Work, and the School of Music. In its work, CSE interacts directly with students and processes student data.

According to its website, Memorial University has nearly 18,000 students as of 2024. To support this sizeable study body—which includes guaranteeing the safety and privacy of their information—the university has a large organizational structure. This sizeable structure includes thorough security policies and standards that must be met before any data sharing can take place.

For CSE, the process of obtaining final software purchase approvals is moving steadily forward through the various approvals and systems required by an institution of this size and complexity. This has given Common Approach valuable insight into the timelines that can accompany institutional network members such as universities.

The provincial government is another governance model encountered with the network. Two network members, Stella’s Circle and Choices for Youth, are part of a provincial income support pilot. The data collected by Stella’s Circle and Choices for Youth is part of a larger information system situated within the income support pilot and that pilot within the provincial government.

As with Memorial University, unique security policies and standards are needed to share even anonymous, aggregate project data. Similarly, approval processes are taking place in tandem with other approval processes across other government initiatives, programs, offices and priorities. This is markedly different from the processes encountered by network members using smaller data sets with direct usage permissions. Stella’s Circle and Choices for Youth have received sharing approvals and purchased their software following a 12-month process, which we now know is standard for organizations taking part in similar initiatives.

Reflecting on these learnings reminded us of our own detailed process at the outset of the Pathfinder Pilot design to develop information-sharing consent forms and receive approval from the Carleton Research Ethics board. The length of this process was not the focus—the focus was ensuring that strong governance over personal and private data was facilitated in an ethical manner. This is the same focus shared by all organizations, and timelines vary to ensure it is achieved.

A crucial step to adopting the Common Impact Data Standard is the ability to share structured data as a JSON-LD file. We assumed this would always be done by exporting this file type from an aligned software. However, many organizations rely on spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are not a substitute for a relational database due to their limited ability to represent impact report data’s one-to-many and many-to-many relationships. This spreadsheet reliance can create a barrier to Data Standard alignment that some organizations have trouble overcoming.

Of the seven network members, three members—CSE, Food First NL and the Newfoundland & Labrador Federation of Co-operatives—pursued aligned software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. The other four relied on spreadsheets in one way or another—End Homelessness St. John’s was already in the process of migrating to Salesforce, which is not currently an aligned software. Stella’s Circle and Choices for Youth both use the ARMS SaaS database to track data for their projects, which exports data to CSV. Community Sector Council Newfoundland and Labrador wanted a spreadsheet-based solution to prototype their data structure before committing to a SaaS option.

At the outset of the Pilot, no spreadsheet-based solution existed that could export a JSON-LD file. This clear demonstration of the need led Common Approach to contract the development of an Airtable extension and an Excel add-on aligned with the Data Standard that could export JSON-LD files. Common Approach chose Airtable because it is enough like a spreadsheet tool to be familiar to Excel or Google Sheets users. However, it has more advanced features than Excel or Google Sheets that can link data together like a relational database. Airtable also provides ample resources for developers to create extensions that can move data in and out of their platform. These utilities needed to provide a solution for organizations that relied on spreadsheets.

The Airtable extension was developed in February 2023 and released to Airtable’s public Marketplace of extensions in May 2023. Since then, the tool has been publicly available and is in use by the four spreadsheet-based network members. An Excel add-on with similar functionality to the Airtable Extension is still in development.

All network members have successfully onboarded to their chosen solution—three organizations to B.world software and four to the Airtable extension. By June 5, 2023, all members successfully submitted valid JSON-LD files meeting the Basic Tier of the Common Impact Data Standard, including those using the Airtable extension. Overall, the adoption of the Data Standard has been successful to date. We hope the Airtable extension will aid future organizations within and outside the Pathfinder Pilot.

In the Pathfinder Pilot, members reflect on the data they are already collecting to determine what parts of their impact measurement practice are already working well. From here, members can see if crafting a coherent framework or narrative around their data is possible. The Pathfinder Pilot aims to improve data collection and analysis processes based on each member’s needs and capacity rather than to tell them what data to collect or share or what framework or narrative to create.

When network members have a minimal degree of impact measurement practice, this step is more straightforward since implementing a basic process for data collection and analysis is the primary focus. Working with the network showed us the need for more clarity when a network understands the process and is focused on optimizing the data itself.

From the early stages of the Pathfinder Pilot, it was clear that the network was aiming beyond data literacy in its Pilot participation. Our baseline data collection showed that six of the seven network members participating in the Pilot fully met the Common Foundations; only one was likely to need moderate support to meet the minimum standard for impact measurement practice. All but one member organization had dedicated measurement and evaluation staff who were data-savvy and had significant experience with software, data, and program evaluation. Due to their high degree of data literacy, the network was not focused on the basics of implementing impact measurement but on refining members’ existing practices and implementing data sharing.

With the question of “how” in data collection already asked and answered by most members, we encountered far more “what” questions than anticipated. This network was looking for more information about what data to collect and share—seeking external goals to follow as their “what” rather than focusing on their existing data and measurement.

A guiding principle of the Common Approach Standards is to centre the needs of social purpose organizations—such as the Pathfinder Pilot network members—in impact measurement. This includes reflecting on the “what” of existing data and measurement and focusing on the organization’s capacity and data literacy—even if it’s already at a high level—instead of applying external goals created without that context. This can be a significant adjustment for organizations accustomed to working towards metrics and goals from outside sources, such as funders.

Conversations were had with the network members to clarify this principle and the role of data in centring their needs. Once network members understood that the Common Approach Standards were designed to empower them in deciding what to measure and how—and still allow them to share that data in a usable way with others who need it—they were able to focus on refining the data network members were already collecting. Questions on what to share in reports became based on their existing information and how it can play into outcomes or indicators that they can associate with the overarching impact themes of their network.

The focus on external data goals showed us the need for more initial clarity around the role of data. This means more emphasis on the importance of members being experts in their own data so they can identify and center their needs and work towards the data-sharing needs of their networks. We are grateful to the network for their openness to continued dedication to the process!

The network Pilot has seen us react to new lessons and implement what we have learned in real-time. There’s something to be said for being kept on your toes, but in the pursuit of having our feet firmly planted, we’re reflecting on our takeaways and how we can implement them proactively going forward:

• The varied approval processes of different institution sizes and governance models will lead to more varied implementation timelines than anticipated among network members. We will consider this information at the beginning of future Pilots to help us build more realistic and flexible expected timelines.
• We knew software usage would be challenging, and it became clear that we needed a data utility to address this challenge and help spreadsheet-based organizations align. We created our Airtable extension to fill this need.
• We need clear messaging on the role of data in the Pathfinder Pilot, the focus on members’ existing data and processes, and how this differs from the focus on benchmarks for success from outside sources like funders. We include this messaging in the intake process of future Pilots to guarantee member understanding.

What’s next? Once all members have approval to purchase their chosen software, network members will be ready to start sharing and aggregating data. We’re excited to see what insights this generates on how the Common Approach Standards can create opportunities for flexible collaboration among SPOs using dissimilar indicators.

We look forward to learning more with and from this network as the Pathfinder Pilot continues, and we thank the members for their enthusiastic participation!