Tools

There are many models, tools and toolkits designed to help identify, assess and provide evidence of your impact. Each has a range of different dimensions, including what they will capture. Here are some of the most well-known approaches.

Planning impact

NCVO Impact Planning Pyramid

This tool can help your organisation to focus on the impact it wants to create and to turn it into reality. Based on the logic model, it helps you to think carefully about the whole of a project, moving from big picture thinking to designing programme specifics, and captures in one place a summary rationale for your initiative. Download the NCVO 3D Impact Planning Pyramid (PDF 460KB)

Assessing impact

'Soft' or qualitative impact can be assessed in a number of ways, such as observation, self-assessment or interviews. Approaches and resources you might find helpful include:

Outcomes Star

Developed by Triangle Consulting for use by homelessness organisations. Take a look at the London Housing Foundation's Homeless Outcomes website.

Catching Confidence tool

A National Institute for Adult Continuing Education resource for capturing changes in learners' confidence levels. Take a look at the Catching Confidence tool.

SOUL Record

Developed for the voluntary sector in Norfolk by City College Norwich to measure informal learning and personal development. Find out more about the SOUL Record.

A practical guide to measuring soft outcomes and distance travelled

Produced by the Welsh European Funding Office, for projects funded by the European Social Fund. Download the pdf guide to measuring soft outcomes.

Techniques for financially valuing social and economic impact

Social Return on Investment (SROI)

The social return on investment model is a version of cost-benefit analysis that helps organisations to monetise the change they make; expressing social or environmental benefit in financial terms. Find out more about SROI from the New Economics Foundation.

Local Multiplier 3 (lm3)

A tool developed by the New Economics Foundation to work out what impact your organisation or project has on the local economy. Find out more from nef's Plugging the Leaks website.

Social accounting and audit

There are a variety of approaches to accounting (and audit) that aim to provide evidence of social and environmental benefits, as well as financial viability and performance. The process involves setting a mix of environmental, social and economic outcomes, agreeing indicators to use for each, collecting evidence against those indicators (and auditing if appropriate), consulting stakeholders and reporting to a panel of them to sign off the social accounts. Social accounting can include monetising these outcomes, though doesn't always do so. The Social Audit Network offers more on social accounting and audit.

Other tools and frameworks

Prove it!

A participative method created by the New Economics Foundation for measuring the effect of community and other projects on local people, on the relationships between them and on their quality of life. Find out more about Prove it!

ChangeCheck

A toolkit from the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (bassac) to help community organisations think through the impact they can make. Find out more about ChangeCheck.

Tell your Story: Community Impact Mapping

A Development Trusts Association framework, identifying the resources you need and how to gather evidence to begin to demonstrate the difference you make, based on examples from development trusts. Find out more about Tell Your Story.

The Balanced Scorecard

Originally developed in the private sector, this tool offers a framework to communicate the outcomes you deliver and keep track of your progress. For more on the balanced scorecard, take a look at the Adventure Capital Fund website, a community enterprise funder.

Co-operatives UK Performance Indicators

Co-operatives UK has created a bank of indicators against which co-ops can measure their co-operative, social and environmental performance. These indicators can be equally useful to the voluntary and community sector.

Inspiring Learning For All

A set of tools and exercises to help museums, galleries, libraries and archives identify, capture and report the different types of learning that goes on in their institutions. They also identify ways to improve services. The framework developed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is based on a set of core outcomes for users and for organisations themselves. It identifies four key elements:

people (offering more learning opportunities)
places (creating learning environments)
partnerships
policies and plans.

Find out more about Inspiring Learning For All.

Quality assurance systems or frameworks

Some organisations find particular quality systems useful for evaluating their work. It's important to bear in mind though, that the focus of most off-the-shelf schemes is on processes (how you do things), rather than achievements (your outputs and outcomes). Learn more about the concept of quality.