A data-driven approach to social impact
When organisations set out to support their communities through CSR, ESG, or social impact programmes, they often have an ambitious goal to reach a large number of people. However, the definition of ‘reach’ is often unclear, and this can be problematic when it’s time to evaluate the impact of the programme and tell the story of the difference it has made.
How can you clarify your programme’s performance indicators, set realistic goals, and use data effectively to assess your social impact? At YourCause from Blackbaud UK, we have developed four starter questions that you should ask to reflect on the data you’ll need to collect and analyse throughout your programme, so you can share your impact story with employees and customers.
- Who are you planning to reach?
Reflecting on your company values and identifying who you want to reach is essential to any social impact programme. Once you have identified the intended audience, data can help you learn about their pains and needs. For example, if you want to impact the lives of young people from deprived backgrounds, you can research data about the daily impact of deprivation on their lives and tie that data into your programme goals.
- What do you mean by ‘reach’?
The word ‘reach’ can mean a multitude of things. For example, in a programme around healthy eating, ‘reach’ can mean the number of people who saw an email or TV ad raising awareness of healthy eating, the number of people who participated in a cookery class, or the number of people who went on to change their eating habits after participating in the programme. Understanding what you mean by ‘reach’ at each step of your programme is essential to ensure consistent and accurate data capture, which will enable you to track your progress.
- Are your goals realistic?
The reality is that reaching a high volume of people and delivering wide-reaching, meaningful impact is a long game, with growth year on year. In the early stages of a programme, during goal setting, there’s often a fine balance: the desire to quickly achieve big numbers to create that ‘wow’ factor should be weighed against the need to ensure meaningful impact. Benchmark data can help you commit to goals with confidence and are essential at this planning stage, when reflecting on where you should sit on the quantity-to-quality scale.
- How will you measure all this?
To ensure you’ll be able to track your progress and share your impact, it’s essential to plan how you will collect KPI data. Are you recording the number of visits to your website? Tracking the number of times a video is viewed? Will you run interviews and analyse qualitative data? Run pre- and post-programme surveys and measure the difference in scores? Planning ahead means you’ll know the type of data needed to measure the kind of impact you want to make and can ensure that type of data is being captured throughout the programme.
These questions can be used at the start of a programme or when you’re reviewing your social impact strategy. By reflecting on them and planning an effective data strategy for your programme, you’ll be able to make a real impact and tell the story of the difference you’ve made, with data to prove it.
Emma Potter, Head of UK Operations at Blackbaud
