Gain total clarity on your organizational impact.
Design social impact evaluation systems that help you to become more effective at realizing your mission.
And boost your likelihood of securing more funding support.
These days, it’s not nearly enough to say, “We do great work,” and expect funders to take your word for it.
You must demonstrate your impact to potential supporters.
Grace Social Sector Consulting is committed to getting you there—whether you wish to design a system to evaluate your organization’s overall impact or a specific program’s impact.
You must demonstrate your impact to potential supporters.
Grace Social Sector Consulting is committed to getting you there—whether you wish to design a system to evaluate your organization’s overall impact or a specific program’s impact.
Uncover assumptions and get aligned
Enable you to:
- Clearly articulate your organization’s and your programs’ intended impacts
- Show how all your programs and activities map to and advance your mission
- Define expected short-, medium- and long-term outcomes of your programs
- Design the right processes to evaluate, measure, and ethically capture evidence of program impact, keeping in mind equity considerations as you design evaluation processes
- Assess whether those outcomes fully align with your mission
- Help staff and board members clearly understand the why’s behind your programs
- Reveal previously invisible assumptions in program design, so everyone sees and shares the same understanding of intended program outcomes
Demonstrate your results
- You’re ready to invest energy in a mapping process that effectively engages key constituents
- You understand the value of conversations that help staff and board articulate their assumptions about program design
- You’re prepared to dedicate time to get clear about impact—and how to demonstrate it
Social Impact evaluation design process
- Inventory programs, inputs, and resources
- Identify assumptions about each program, including the key short-term, medium-term, and long-term outcomes for each one
- Analyze the concerns and viewpoints of key constituents, so you can better build their support, in addition to funders’ support
- Design processes that evaluate and measure evidence of program impact
Social Impact Evaluation Design FAQs
Q: We send evaluations at the end of each program. Is adding an impact mapping process really necessary?
A: Post-program evaluations (AKA smile sheets) typically only gather data on how much participants enjoyed an experience. And certainly, how attendees experience programs IS important. Yet mapping the program impact and getting clear about desired outcomes allows you to ask questions that test your assumptions and learn the extent to which your programs are meeting your goals—or falling short.
Q. We are not grant funded. Is impact mapping still worth the effort?
A. Having insights into institutional funders from impact mapping is definitely useful. The process also deepens your board, staff, and all internal stakeholders’ understanding of your programs. Impact mapping generates alignment among your stakeholders on your desired outcomes for the program and your organization. And you may uncover some desired outcomes that your program currently can’t deliver that point to possible program enhancements.
Q. I have heard impact mapping called a “theory of change.” Is this the same thing?
A. Essentially an impact map is the same as a theory of change or a logic model. In some instances, the language of “theory of change” can be intimidating to some constituents, so at Grace Social Sector Consulting, we use the term impact mapping. A theory of change maps out the assumptions that underlie your organizational mission and how you achieve that purpose and/or the change you are trying to achieve in the world. Logic models map out specific programs that support your overall organizational mission and goals.
Q. Impact maps and theories of change seem to assume linear relationships between actions and outcomes. Our programs have many elements, and the people we serve have many life aspects that impact their experiences. How does your process account for this?
A. Yes, impact maps simplify what is rarely simple. And the map is not the territory. Impact maps are never meant to capture all the possible permutations. Each person participating in your offerings will have their own unique experience. Our process generates insights into which program elements and intended outcomes to focus on, and can help you demonstrate how changes are unfolding for participants—beyond just reporting how many people participated.
Q. We already track how many people participate in our programs. How is this different?
A. Tracking how many people are participating in each of your programs is important to track interest. Yet you can go deeper, and begin to capture data on what’s changing for participants. What are you hoping they’ll walk away with after participating? What will be different in their lives? By identifying these elements, and then creating ways to capture this information, you can demonstrate your impact.