Measuring the impact of your organisation's work

Demonstrating added value is increasingly important to voluntary sector organisations

Share Comments (1) Liza Ramrayka Guardian Professional, Thursday 17 March 2011 09.29 GMT

Government spending cuts and fierce competition for other funding have ramped up pressure on voluntary sector organisations to demonstrate their impact to commissioners, grant-making trusts and donors.


"Impact" means different things to different people, but it can be most easily defined as the outcomes achieved by your organisation (what happens to service users, their families and so on as a result of your activities) and the wider, longer-term effects of your work. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) defines impact as "the difference your organisation makes".


To define that difference, the sector and its partners have generated a range of tools and methodologies to measure impact. These range from measures of "hard" outcomes, such as numbers of people helped by a service, to "soft" outcomes, such as a service user's confidence increasing. Some local authorities such as Sheffield city council are known to be supporting outcomes-based commissioning. There are also techniques to financially value the social and economic impact.

To read full article, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2011/mar/17/measuring-impact-work?CMP=twt_gu