Starting a social enterprise in a non-profit often starts with a simple idea – renting out space, starting a gift store, offering a current service to a new (paying) market, providing supportive employment opportunities to clients.
"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know."
-Former US of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld
Are you about to engage in strategic or business planning in your organization? Planning offers a great point to think about what has and hasn’t worked in the past, how you create value (for community, within your business and organization), how you can create even more value, and ways to measure your success moving forward. Demonstrating Value can complement planning activities in a number of ways.
Following up from her webinar “You Say Impacts, I Say Outcomes”, Kylie Hutchinson (Community Solutions Planning and Evaluation) shared an Evaluation Terminology Mind-Map in a recent Community Solutions newsletter.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in an insightful webinar facilitated by Kylie Hutchinson at Community Solutions Planning & Evaluation. This webinar, entitled “You Say Impacts, I Say Outcomes” was all about clarifying the confusion in evaluation terminology.
Webinar presented by Community Solutions Planning & Evaluation (Facilitator: Kylie Hutchinson)
January 31st and February 7th, 2012 (10:00 - 11:30 AM)
When you hear the word “impact”, what comes to mind? While your first thoughts may include that kickboxing class you just joined, it is it is also true that the term “impact” is often used loosely to encompass any type of reporting about the social or environmental mission of an organization. In the world of evaluation, this word has a much ‘tighter’ meaning: Impact is the tracking of long-term outcomes, controlling for external influences, or using randomized control trials to prove that the outcomes are attributable to a particular organization’s efforts.
