Cities Reducing Poverty members are showing increasing interest in making the shift from evaluating and reporting on their activities – such as the number of volunteer hours worked or the amount of people who registered for a program – to measuring and talking about their impact.
Collective Impact initiatives, by nature, seek to “move the needle” on issues such as poverty, and with such complex efforts, it is important to have a shared measurement system to help keep efforts aligned, hold one another accountable, and to have data to indicate progress and for making strategic decisions.
From March – August 2019, 17 Cities Reducing Poverty (CRP) members participated in a pilot coaching program to gain knowledge, skills and resources to help them start or upgrade their tracking and reporting of their impact. Many finished the year by publishing a 2019 Community Impact Report, despite beginning with a number of common evaluation challenges, including:
Led by evaluator, Mark Cabaj, President of Here 2 There Consulting, the program provided an evaluation framework - adaptable at the local level, and comparable against similar collaborative efforts across Canada – to guide collaboratives in clarifying and formalizing their theory of change and establishing short, medium and long-term outcome goals and indicators.
Several communities developed new impact frameworks to guide and communicate their work broadly and some were able to continue with and/or adapt existing frameworks. Examples include:
Dufferin County Equity Collaborative impact framework (new)
Sault Ste. Marie Poverty Round Table impact framework (existing)
Here are four good ideas learned from the program, for building your own impact evaluation framework and plan:
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