Our commitment to trust: Why Common Approach signed the Tamarack Open Letter
Common Approach to Impact Measurement is proud to stand with the sector in signing the Tamarack Institute’s “Open Letter from Canada’s Nonprofits and Charities to Corporate and Philanthropic Funders.” As it states, “the time is now to advance trust-based community investment, not slide backwards.”
The letter is an important call to action for corporate and philanthropic funders across Canada to commit to and demonstrate trust-based philanthropic funding practices. Our decision to sign is rooted in the fundamental alignment between the principles of trust-based philanthropy and our core mission—to make impact measurement more useful and less burdensome for charities, nonprofits and social businesses.
The open letter highlights a key practice that resonates with our work—the need for administrative burden-free applications, reporting tools, and data practices that establish reciprocal data relationships with grantees.
For too long, impact measurement has created a win/lose dynamic. Funders’ requirements often force nonprofits and charities into a burdensome, time-consuming, box-ticking exercise, distracting them from their mission. This top-down imposition of metrics is inherently at odds with creating a dynamic based on trust.
Common Approach’s standards are designed to flip this dynamic, implementing a bottom-up approach that is the necessary data backbone for trust-based philanthropy.
- Empowering change-makers: Our standards aim to give charities, nonprofits, and social businesses the power to choose what to measure—acknowledging that the organizations closest to the work know what is most important. The Common Foundations help set a minimum standard to ensure the data organizations collect is meaningful, relevant, and aligned with their own strategy and goals. The Common Impact Data Standard ensures it can be easily shared with funders, investors, and grant-makers.
- Improved impact data for the whole sector: Our standards aim to set funders up to simply ask, “What are organizations already measuring?” and know they’ll be able to make sense of the customized, bottom-up metrics they receive. The Common Framework provides a process for aggregating diverse data, enabling funders, investors and grant-makers to make sense of their own impact at the portfolio level.
Bottom-up impact measurement is an exercise of trust between charities, nonprofits and social businesses, and the funders, investors and grant-makers who support them. Additionally, it reduces administrative burden, fosters stronger data practices, and directly demonstrates the equity and trust-centred partnerships that the Tamarack letter champions.
Trust-based community investment requires that funders trust their grantees to know what is working—and that trust must be reflected in their measurement and reporting practices.
We encourage other non-profits, charities and social enterprises to review the Tamarack letter and consider adding your organization’s name.
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