Providing the tools and expertise needed to guide better social outcomes.
Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been part of a Collaboration for Impact peer learning experience, engaging 16 different collaborations to share their experience of shared measurement.
This is the captain’s log from my experience as facilitator and shared measurement navigator. Read More
When it comes to measuring collaborative and collective impact, we’re often asked: how can we make it easier for organisations to learn from each other, save money on evaluation costs, and build an evidence base of what works? While strictly speaking, this can’t be achieved with the wave of a magic wand, we’ve found that a shared approach to measurement – where organisations apply the same indicator or set of indicators of change to a common area of work – can deliver some pretty magical results. Read More
It’s hard to imagine, but we are already beginning to think about budgets and plans for FY2018/19.
For those of us in the social impact space, that means we need to get real about getting our organisations ready to demonstrate outcomes, and consider the resources needed to support this.
Interested in working in Social Impact Measurement? We asked six practitioners to share their experiences on how they ended up working in the space, and why. And don’t forget to join us at the SIMNA VIC committee and APSIC panel event next week! Read More
I have heard “Developmental Evaluation” (DE) described many, many different ways since Michael Quinn Patton coined the term in his 2010 book of the same name.
According to some of these descriptions: it’s a way to record our journey so far; it’s about “developmental moments”; it’s rapid feedback; it’s action learning re-packaged; and/or it’s the same as formative evaluation, linked to innovative and complexity which can be used to achieve scale and so on.
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The other day someone told me that they didn’t want to be taken away from the ‘real work’ to collect data for outcomes measurement.
As someone who has dedicated their career to measurement and evaluation I had to take a deep breath. As someone who has seen the real difference made by outcomes measurement to program impact, I had to take another breath… Read More
The Collective Impact framework has a lot to offer agencies seeking large-scale, systems-level change to complex problems.
However, it can sometimes be challenging to know where to start. That’s why we’ve written up some of the ways we think collective impact can be considered – do you want the orchestra, the jazz band or the festival line up approach?… Read More
I love the summer break for reflecting on trends in the measurement and evaluation space (no, really – I do!) So, here are the top five trends in social impact measurement for 2017.
1. Big data
Big data is everywhere. But what is it? Big data is data sets so huge that they require more complex methods, applications and programs to analyse them… Read More
I’ll admit it: the thought of a colourful dashboard with real time data at my fingertips brings me joy. For those of us working in collaborations, how great would it be to have shared measurement online, with data democratically available and informing our learning through real time feedback loops?
Few would dispute the benefits of making community data available to inform the best possible decisions. However, the first question I get asked from people within collaborations is – how do we get people to share data? Risk and fear often come to mind when people mention sharing data across agencies within communities. People ask… Read More