ICTlogy

Abstract:

Roadmap to social impact: your step-by-step guide to planning, measuring and communicating social impact (The Roadmap) is a step-by-step guide to support you and your organisation through the process of outcomes measurement and evaluation, to help you demonstrate your contribution to social impact. We use the term ‘program’ throughout The Roadmap for simplicity, but you may be implementing an initiative, or a suite of programs. If you are implementing actions for a social purpose and want to measure the outcomes of these actions, whatever you call them, this guide is for you.

Each chapter in this guide discusses key concepts, their importance to outcomes measurement and impact assessment, and what they mean in practice.

If you have read CSI’s resource The Compass: your guide to social impact measurement(https://www.csi.edu.au/research/tools-and-guides/compass-your-guide-social-impact-measurement/), you will understand why outcomes measurement is important, but you may still have questions about how to implement it. The Roadmap is here to help.

Who this guide is for

The Roadmap is for everyone working towards the creation of positive social impact in Australia who wants to measure the change they make for individuals, organisations, communities and the society. ‘You’ (the reader) may be the person implementing the program, initiative, or actions, the project manager, leader or the whole team. As you will see throughout this guide, the role of measuring is scattered throughout the organisation.

What this guide is not

If you want a beginners’ guide to outcomes measurement, to understand what it is and why it is important, please read The Compass.

While The Roadmap introduces some established techniques for data collection and analysis, it is not a guide to research methods. A list of resources is however provided at the end of the guide, including tools for stakeholder engagement, developing a survey or interview questionnaire and data analysis.