Community-driven
Survey: The barriers to impact measurement
Research often notes that social purpose organizations (SPOs) find impact measurement confusing. However, when Social Value Canada set out to create a resource to reduce the confusion, it became clear that “confusing” lumps together very different challenges; challenges that would be addressed by very different resources.
So, it became clear that before resources were developed, it would be helpful to further explore the question: What exactly do SPOs find confusing about impact measurement?
Are you a social purpose organization, or an organization that funds or supports them? Please weigh in! The survey only takes about 5 minutes.
The survey asks how much the following common confusions are barriers to impact measurement and reporting for your organization:
Confusion about the terms of impact measurement (such as outputs, outcome, and different meanings of impact).- Confusion over the array of tools, approaches, and standards available.
- Confusion about which tools, approach, standard to use for which purpose.
- Confusion about which tools to use together (pairings) and which are alternatives to each other.
For each, Social Value Canada wants to know: do these impede your impact measurement not at all, a little, or a lot?
Common Approach has had a sneak peek at the data collected so far, and there are some interesting results. For example, there seems to be an interesting difference between how SPOs and others (funders, consultants, etc) answer the questions. We say “appears” because the number of responses is still a little low, but we are interested to see if this trend continues as more responses are received.
The survey will only take you about 5 minutes and will help shape resources to help clarify impact measurement for social purpose organizations. Your response is much appreciated!
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