Measuring Impact and Leveraging Results to Propel Your Mission Forward
What data should be collected and analyzed to measure growth and impact for a nonprofit? This is probably a common question you ask yourself as an organizational leader at the end of each year.
To put it in athletic terms, how will you know if you had a winning season? It seems easier for coaches and teams because they have a season and a list of goals they want to achieve and metrics (stats) that will be kept measuring against the goals that were set before the season began.
Nonprofits are really in the same situation. They have a yearly plan for executing their mission and gathering resources. Benchmark metrics allow leaders to measure progress and adjust their strategies. At the end of the year, they should know if they have successfully met their goals and, therefore, completed their mission.
Does this sound familiar or foreign to you? If it sounds familiar, you probably are very successful in your endeavors. You should probably seek assistance to gain guidance and direction if it sounds foreign.
Start by tracking the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) aligned with your mission:
- Mission Metrics: Numbers related to the critical parts of your mission, including participation, lives impacted, and how they were impacted. (Example: we delivered 200 meals to the same number of families for Thanksgiving this year, an increase of 10 meals from the previous year.)
- Financial Health: Monitor the organization’s financial stability by tracking expenses (Examples: mission programs, overhead, and administration) and revenue (donors, grants, events, etc.) and measure it against your projected budget and last year’s numbers.
- Engagement Levels: Measure the number of engagements related to your mission. This measurement can include encounters such as beneficiaries, volunteers, and supporters, the number of events attended, and presentations given.
- Social Media and Online Presence: Your online presence is necessary for marketing and building awareness of your mission. Online tools all come with analytics and should be reviewed frequently to measure impact and make appropriate adjustments. Marketing online is very affordable for many nonprofits.
- Feedback and Surveys: Collecting input from internal and external stakeholders can assist an organization in making the necessary improvements to meet its mission. This can be done simply by adding to interactions with QR codes or in more formal ways through annual surveys posted online or sent through email.
Remember, numbers are not the only way to describe an organization’s mission impact. Qualitative measurements and feedback through stories, referrals, and testimonials are very powerful ways to describe how lives are changing due to what your organization is doing in the communities you serve. Listen and record such stories and have a system for gathering this data.
Measuring growth and impact is critical to any nonprofit’s journey. It is not just about highlighting your successes and identifying failures but be measuring your impact, you will learn how to improve on what you do and amplify what you are best at doing.
At Everyone Thrives Consultant Services, we will become partners in your mission. At the core of what we do, helping those who help others to thrive is our central purpose. Our vision is to create communities where everyone can achieve their goals and live the best quality of life. We bring a blend of experience and a toolbox of strategies to help you navigate growth and build your potential. Our collaborative approach will help you establish a plan to collect and measure your programs and use that information to craft a powerful and compelling story.
Connecting with Everyone Thrives Consultant Services is easy as we are accessible online through our website and LinkedIn, or we can be emailed at info@everyonethrives.com. We thrive on personal connections, so we can set up a free 30-minute phone call to learn more about your organization and needs.
For more leadership and organizational development content, check out our other posts on this page or our Founder and CEO, Ray Langlois, M. Ed. ‘s LinkedIn page.