5 Benefits of Measuring Impact for Nonprofits

Almost every nonprofit organization essentially has the same goal: to make its community better. However, what’s truly necessary to accurately attain that goal can get overlooked when measurements of impact are not taken into account. Impact measurement is the process of quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating the impact of an organization. 

Properly setting expectations and tracking your nonprofit’s impact has a number of benefits that add to the sustainability of your work. Here are five benefits we believe to be most important to consider when setting out to achieve your goals:

1. Improving Donor Relations

When deciding where to focus their charitable giving, donors look for organizations that are effective and trustworthy. After all, they don’t want to see a bad return on their investment in the community.

One of the most important ways your nonprofit can demonstrate to both current and potential donors that it is effective at spending their money wisely is through impact measurement. With careful planning and evaluation, you can show donors how their money was specifically used to help make their community better.

2. Evaluating Program Effectiveness

As a nonprofit, you likely operate a number of programs and events to help your organization raise money. Sometimes, though, it’s easy to get caught in a cycle of getting that next thing done instead of stopping to consider whether the program is worth the effort. For example, are the time and resources you dedicate to planning that annual silent auction worth the financial return?

When you evaluate a program’s effectiveness by creating metrics and looking at the numbers, you can make a decision on whether the program is worth continuing in its current format.

3. Planning for the Future

What are your nonprofit’s long-term goals? Are you on the path to achieving them? Long-term goals are foundational to your nonprofit’s overall success. If you started a nonprofit with the goal of distributing a certain number of meals in the community by your third year of operations, you should be able to look back and see progress toward that goal.

If you’re off-track, there is no better time to take a hard look at your leadership, process, and results than right now.

4. Demonstrating Impact to the Board

Scrambling at the last minute to create a quarterly board meeting presentation is an all-too-common occurrence in the nonprofit world—but it shouldn’t be. The first key to an effective board meeting is having an agenda and getting it out to the board in advance.

Once they’re in the room, part of your job is making sure they know how effective the nonprofit has been in achieving its goals. Clear impact measurements will show your board that your leadership knows what it’s doing and is using the organization’s resources wisely.

5. Generating Meaningful Social Media Content

As we detailed in an earlier blog post, nonprofits should take advantage of social media as a free tool to help build awareness of their work in the community. But constantly generating content for social media—especially meaningful content that can truly change your audience’s perception of the nonprofit—can be difficult and time consuming.

Impact measuring will provide your organization with convincing data that can be shared on social media in the form of creative infographics and posts.

Let Us Help You

According to a recent survey, only about one in five nonprofit executives believe they are very effective at demonstrating outcomes through impact measuring. Most of those surveyed blamed their ineffectiveness on a lack of staff and useful tracking systems. That’s where we come in. Resilia’s platform offers comprehensive tools to track your nonprofit’s impact. Our experts can help you plan for success. Contact us for a free consultation today.

Photo cred: Capital Area Food Bank, The Washington Post