– Kate Ruff
Community-Driven: Call to Action
Showcase your alignment with the Common Approach
For the standard to grow, people and organizations need to be able to demonstrate that they are using the Common Approach. Request use of the Common Foundations or Common Approach identifiers by sending your self-assessment report or description of how you are aligning to info@commonapproach.org. We will verify and send you the Common Foundations identifier as image files along with guidelines and terms of use.
Social Purpose Organizations
For social purpose organizations, the starting place is the Common Foundations self-assessment. The self-assessment can help you determine if you are meeting the minimum standard of impact measurement in Canada. It’s a simple online evaluation tool that takes you through the five essential practices common across many impact measurement methods and frameworks. If you are doing all five practices, you meet the minimum standard.
To complete the self-assessment you answer yes or no for each of the 24 sub-practices. Answer yes whenever your organization uses the practice in the usual course of work and throughout the program or annual cycle. The Common Foundations self-assessment will generate a report and send it to the email address you provided. Many social purpose organizations are surprised to find that they are meeting the minimum standard – and if you aren’t, the report will mean that you can focus on the areas to develop. Meeting the minimum standard has value, and you can demonstrate it by adding the Common Approach logo to your public materials and website.
Trainers and Consultants
The Common Foundations identifier is also available to organizations and independent consultants who provide training or publish resources. By aligning your work with the five essential practices and introducing the Common Approach to your stakeholders and clients, you are moving the needle toward a social impact standard. In addition to the Common Approach identifier, we post recognition of Common Foundations Champions on commonapproach.org.
Developers
Finally, we see software development and knowledge management and information management (KMIM) as essential to the Common Approach. Currently, software partners include SAMETRICA, Impact Dashboard and (former) SIS and we are talking to many other people building SaaS and internal systems. So if you are planning to use the Common Impact Data Standard, we also offer the Common Approach identification as a way to show that you are part of the impact measurement solution.
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Case study summary: Using the Common Impact Data Standard and Common Framework
To illustrate how these two Standards work, we collaborated with Carleton University and Rally Assets on an example using an investment portfolio focused on affordable housing. This case study demonstrates how these Standards can be used to represent impact data, allowing for a nuanced analysis across a portfolio while reducing the burden of reporting.
Meet the members of Common Approach’s first technical committee
Common Approach is pleased to announce we have convened our first technical committee for the Common Impact Data Standard! They will help develop the next version of Standard and support the creation of more user-friendly technical resources.
Common Impact Data Standard and Microsoft Nonprofit Accelerator Architecture
The Common Approach recently completed a crosswalk between its Common Impact Data Standard and the Common Data Model for Nonprofits, stewarded by Microsoft, to analyze compatibility between the two data models.
