Who we are

Enhancing Knowledge about Community Impact

Demonstrating Value is an initiative led by Vancity Community Foundation to enhance the capacity of community-based organizations to strategically plan, manage and communicate the value of their work, and in particular the measurement of social and environmental impact. We assist non-profits, social enterprises and community investors to ask the right questions about their work, and to develop systems to track and communicate their value. Our work is focused in two key areas: building organizational capacity and research and tool development.

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Demonstrating Value Focus Areas

Building Organizational Capacity

Community-based organizations are faced with many demands to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work, both as a means for improving their programs and services and as a response to the demands of investors and the public.

We promote the development of effective performance measurement, monitoring and communication practices. This includes:

Supporting social enterprises and other community-based oganizations to better articulate, measure and communicate their impact through the use of this website, learning activities and one-on-one support.
Developing a network of partners to foster performance monitoring, information sharing, and learning in the sector. This includes working with investors and consultants who would like to both support community-based organizations to develop capacity in this area, and who also want to improve their own generation and use of information.

Learn more about Demonstrating Value for Consultants

Learn more about Demonstrating Value for Investors

Research & Tool Development

Information about community impact can be difficult to obtain because many factors and organizations come together to create impact over a period of time. Data can also be costly for any one organization to access and collect.
We lead research and development projects to advance the state of measurement methods, tools and practice to better understand community impact. Our focus is to bring community organizations together to:

Assess how practices in the sector can be improved.
Foster the development and sharing of tools and evidence about social, economic and environmental outcomes.

Farmers' Market Toolkit Project

Download Past Research reports

Rooted in Community

The Demonstrating Value Initiative emerged from a collaborative research project in 2007 to develop practical solutions and tools to address how social enterprises could assess their performance and impact. Over 20 social enterprises and investors actively participated in the development of a collection of tools and concepts for this purpose. The following organizations have funded the Initiative:

Learn more about our Staff & Partners

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