Measuring and Improving Social Impacts

7Measurement Basics

Are we really making a difference? This is the question that all social impact investors ask themselves. Yet in a recent survey of nonprofit executives, only half said that their organizations were collecting data on client outcomes.¹ In another study, more than 70 percent of grant makers agreed that foundations lacked the data they needed to effectively assess their performance.² Only about one-fifth of nonprofits report working with professional evaluators, whether internal or external, to evaluate their performance.³ Many of those that do measure their impact do so only to meet the requirements of funders. And many that don’t measure impact mistakenly believe that measurement can only be done quantitatively—an approach ...