Resource ID: INDIGO-ARES-0098
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Improving-Social-Impacts-Nonprofits/dp/1609949773
Based on years of research and analysis of field studies from around the globe, Epstein and Yuthas offer a five-step process that will help you gain clarity about the impacts that matter most to you and will provide you with methods to measure and improve them. They outline a systematic approach to deciding what resources you should invest, what problem you should address, and which activities and organizations you should support. Once you’ve made those decisions, you can use their tools, frameworks, and metrics to define exactly what success looks like, even for goals like reducing global warming or poverty that are extremely difficult to measure. Then they show you how to use that data to further develop and increase your social impact.
Epstein and Yuthas personally interviewed leaders at over sixty different organizations for this book and include examples from nearly a hundred more. This is unquestionably the most complete, practical, and thoroughly researched guide to taking a rigorous, data-driven approach to expanding the good you do in the world.
Impact goal: Well being, Social impact
Internal/external: External, Internal
Leader: Epstein and Yuthas (authors)
Method: Framework agnostic
Output format: Ordinal, Agnostic, Qualitative only, Monetary valuation, Quant but no index, Non monetary quant index
Scale: Meso, Macro, Micro, Agnostic
Sourcing: Self driven
Time frame: Ongoing, Prospective, Retrospective
Type: Guide
Used in sectors: Csr, Charity, Impact investing
Who: Third sector, Private sector
INDIGO data are shared for research and policy analysis purposes. INDIGO data can be used to support a range of insights, for example, to understand the social outcomes that projects aim to improve, the network of organisations across projects, trends, scales, timelines and summary information. The collaborative system by which we collect, process, and share data is designed to advance data-sharing norms, harmonise data definitions and improve data use. These data are NOT shared for auditing, investment, or legal purposes. Please independently verify any data that you might use in decision making. We provide no guarantees or assurances as to the quality of these data. Data may be inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, and/or not current for various reasons: INDIGO is a collaborative and iterative initiative that mostly relies on projects all over the world volunteering to share their data. We have a system for processing information and try to attribute data to named sources, but we do not audit, cross-check, or verify all information provided to us. It takes time and resources to share data, which may not have been included in a project’s budget. Many of the projects are ongoing and timely updates may not be available. Different people may have different interpretations of data items and definitions. Even when data are high quality, interpretation or generalisation to different contexts may not be possible and/or requires additional information and/or expertise. Help us improve our data quality: email us at indigo@bsg.ox.ac.uk if you have data on new projects, changes or performance updates on current projects, clarifications or corrections on our data, and/or confidentiality or sensitivity notices. Please also give input via the INDIGO Data Definitions Improvement Tool and INDIGO Feedback Questionnaire.