Philosophers wonder about the chronological concerns of chickens and eggs. Those in Homeland Security wrangle the line between safety and liberty. Corporate CEOs debate strategies for getting a bigger slice of the market. Politicians ponder the make-up of the swing voter’s brain.
We in the non-profit world think a lot about results—and how you measure something as intangible and nebulous as social change. Counting participants or dollars given or even change in individual lives is one thing—but for those interested in measuring the impact of a movement, of societal change, well, what’s the yard stick? Behavior can’t be counted, and multiplier effects aren’t nearly as numerical as they sound. How do you measure the impact of a financial literacy class taught to 25 women over their lifetimes, over knowledge transmitted to their children, over decisions made generations from now?
This was one of the topics of discussion during the annual National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership meeting hosted by the Urban Institute in January. After our Program Officers, Carolee Summers-Sparks and Nisha Patel, presented on the use of data and findings emerging from Stepping Stones, the questions they received centered a great deal on how to scale up statistics along with social change—how to measure a movement, and not just money, participants or other known quantities.
The resounding answer: partnership, partnership and more partnership.
Nisha and Carolee repeatedly exuded the value of The Women’s Foundation’s partnerships with Stepping Stones Grantee Partners, Investors and especially with Innovation Network and the Urban Institute – our evaluation, and research gurus, respectively, assisting us with establishing increasingly complex, nuanced and rich data on the broad-based social change occurring through Stepping Stones.
Still, the questions continued, and rightly so.
How do you measure and track change in and among different actors engaging in a multitude of strategies to achieve the same goals and objectives? As the questions and trends emerging become more and more complex, and populations larger and larger—how do you establish a true cause and effect corollary? How do you assess David’s impact on Goliath? What about seeing the change in populations that may never be a direct client of the strategies provided?
Can any of this be done at all? And if so, how and by whom?
Important questions as foundations and non-profits become increasingly concerned about investing in social change, and not just the good works of charity.
Where do you stand with it all? Let us know on our blog, where we’ve started the conversation and hope to continue it. Join us.
