You know the difference you make from the compliments and feedback you receive but do you really understand your impact on the people who use your services and in the wider community? This tool will help you to gather together all the information your organisation holds. It will capture this powerful information enabling you to measure and demonstrate your impact.
Are you a small to medium sized organisation looking to measure the impact of your work? Then the Social Impact Measurement Toolbox has been designed specifically to meet your needs as it shows a way for people to work together to plan how to measure the impact of their work. It contains lots of activities that will help you gather the information you need, come to decisions about how you will go forward and assess your findings.
Six carefully designed sections that help you and your organisation think through social impact measurement.
The option to start at the beginning and work your way through all the materials or begin where it is appropriate for you.
Help to build a robust impact measurement plan from the foundations upward, rather than jumping in with a complex tool or framework from the start. We point you in the direction of other tools you can use once you have formed a plan
The opportunity to identify and deal with any gaps or to check if you are collecting information you don’t currently use.
Development of your organisation’s approach to social impact measurement – but at the same time build your team’s communication, skills and knowledge around impact measurement.
Section A
Collecting information
Reviewing what information you already collect and identifying any gaps
Section B
Looking at who to involve
Finding out who needs t be involved in the process
Section C
Conversations about change
What sort of questions should you be asking people to find out about what changes?
Section D
Identifying outcomes to measure
Clarifying what you are setting out to achieve
Section E
Processing information
How to process and manage the information you collect
Section F
Systematic planning
Drawing your information together to form an overview and plan
Pay for a licence that allows up to five people from your organisation to use the materials (we call this your impact team)
Work as a group or individually on the materials
Gather and store information about your organisation in your confidential pages of this site
Access your information at any time
Download and print the working documents if you prefer this to working online
Go back to your information and revise the findings in a year’s time to keep your impact measurement reporting up to date
How much you use this toolbox is up to you but your one-off payment allows you to go back and work with it as often as you like.
FAQs
That’s up to you and how much time you have available. In the Getting Started section, we suggest leaving a gap of no more than three weeks between each section – and to agree a work plan before you start. But it’s up to you and the other demands on your time.
We suggest that between 3 – 5 of you should work together on the toolbox but if you want to allocate this task to one or two people that’s fine. Later on you will need to involve other people in your organisation, this is discussed in Section E
Yes, you can work online in your own time and then agree times to talk on the phone or have an online meeting about what you’ve done. You will be able to see what other members of your impact team have been working on and your facilitator will be able to edit people’s contributions and create a single document containing everyone’s ideas.
You can download and share the activity sheets that summarise the work you’ve done with other colleagues, but the main content is limited to a maximum of five people who will be doing the work.
We’ve found that when organisations are new to measuring impact or are smaller groups with not much time to spare, it can be difficult to use some of the existing tools. Most impact tools assume that you have got all your data organised and that you are clear about what you want to measure. We know that’s not the case for everyone and this toolbox helps you to get started. Once you have all your information and planning sorted out then you can choose to use one of the more complex tools to do a more detailed analysis. In Section D we suggest other tools you could go on to use.
Yes – you need to email and tell us whose access is being removed and give us the email address of the new team member. You can still only have a maximum of five people who can use the Toolbox.
Yes, you need to email us and inform us who is taking over and we will change the named facilitator.
You can access the learning materials – the guide to using the Toolbox and sections A – F as soon as we have received your payment. It will take up to 48 hours to register the team members to access the activity sheets.
Purchase a license for your own group (max. 5 members) and gain access to our SIM Toolbox.
If you would like any further information about the toolbox, to find out about accessing a paper version of the toolbox or about discounts for block purchasing, please contact Social Enterprise East of England.
Email: admin@seee.co.uk