3 months in: what I am learning from Impact Recorder
Three months ago I started using our own impact measurement tool which we developed to help social enterprises, non-profit organisations and researchers. My goal was to start recording information around our social impact activities, which we offer through a program called ‘Design for Good’.
My aim is to create our impact report, as well as conduct an evaluation and review of Design for Good, and evolving it to improve our social benefit. But to do this, I need to know where we are now.
The situation beforehand…
It’s not the first time I have tried to keep track of our social impact. In the past I have used a spreadsheet or database to note down our Design for Good mentoring, design 1:1s and partnerships. If data collection was consistent, and followed up with surveys or confirmation reviews, this may have worked well.
However, I kept forgetting what I’d done with who, and scrolling back through my calendar wasn’t that illuminating for the outcomes of our coaching and design sessions.
Introducing the calendar connection
I have to give credit here to Co-Founder Elise, who created a map of her ideal impact tracking tool, and it began with “When I create an event in my calendar, it feeds through to my impact tracker”.
Having your notes started when you arrive is quite exciting. It really reduces the blank page feeling. There you are, visiting your Impact Recorder on your weekly routine, and there’s a bunch of recent activity there to fill out the details of. It’s fresh in your memory, it’s pre-tuned so the relevant options are available to tag, and you’re done in a few minutes.
Later, if you have survey results, you can link them into this activity to help keep track of them, or import them into an adjacent tab and link to them there, get charts, and really contextualise your notes and the inputs in the context of the feedback and outcomes.
What have we learnt so far?
Well, I have definitely had the experience of seeing my blind spots. This is a blessing of course, and helpful in evolving our social impact work and seeing what else we need to know in order to share and evidence our impact.
For example, (and these outcomes are thematic rather than from a survey), I can already see that in 50% of cases, we have not been able to collect outcomes data.
In part this is because of the type of social impact work we do, and with who, and our partnership agreements around it. But, it is also valuable to see what we might be missing, in terms of even a follow up conversation to see where our help led to, or where we could change tack.
So, what opportunities does this open for our program?
As part of our Design for Good review this year, we will consider the overall shape of engagements with our beneficiaries, including designing a sensitive and appropriate feedback and outcomes gathering process, even if still conversational. Formalising our data recording and management with Impact Recorder will be something we prioritise.
At this point, where we have given approximately 500 hours to Design for Good beneficiaries, since 2019, it feels like a good milestone to reflect and continue to improve what we offer.
If you’d like to have a chat about how Impact Recorder could help you too, you can book a chat with Lara at the Impact Recorder information page.
