Impact Measurement: why is it important?

With the constant transformation of social paradigms, organizations have been constantly evolving to achieve goals according to the context that surrounds them. Thus, at present, the priorities of social organizations are not only economic goals, they also seek to generate a social impact that is representative within the community to which they are attached. 

This situation has gained so much strength in recent years that not only the organizations executing projects are concerned about the impact, but, at the same time, the financiers are looking for projects that cause certain effects and impacts in certain environments and/or or communities. In this way, a professionalization of social projects has been forged that has made it possible to analyze and develop methods and tools to evaluate and monitor the social impact generated by the projects. 

According to the Center for Social Impact, “Social impact is defined as the net effect of an activity on a community and the well-being of individuals and families.” This definition is particularly interesting since it assesses the impact at different scales, going from the macro to the micro, and that is where its importance lies, since it generates effects at different social scales during the execution and results of a project. 

Having said that, one must enter the question of why measure social impact? Well, this measurement makes it possible to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the social impact that said project has as its objective and, in this way, to be able to justify it in reports that can be presented to the community, financing entities, donation or subsidy programs, etc. supports to ensure the results of the project. Likewise, it enables coordination between the micro projects within the execution. In other words, it allows the actions carried out within the social project to be aligned and directed towards favorable results. 

Given that impact measurement is gaining more and more strength, there is a wide variety of methodologies for its evaluation that social organizations can use to implement in their project and determine its effectiveness and efficiency. In turn, this brings with it a problem and that is that there is no consensus on a definitive method to assess the social impact of projects, thus hindering a universal validation to compare the impact of one project with respect to another, since there is It is likely that such measurement will be done with different methods pointing to different results. 

Although at first it may seem complicated and exhausting to add impact measurement to a social project, in reality this tool allows organizations to broadly see what the positive effects of their project will be by analyzing the actors involved and measuring their results. through indicators that are generated during the execution of the projects. So what are you waiting for to start measuring the impact on your organization? 

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