By Barry Knight – consultant for the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF)
Where are we
We are in the middle of a process with several lines of action of the initiative “Measuring what matters”. Under the leadership of Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF), from Candid It's from Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace (PSJP), around 130 people working in civil society around the world have been contributing to this work over the last two years.
To date, we have produced a report with our main findings. The document “Measuring what matters” shows that (i) simple metrics are not enough to understand the complexity of social changes; and that (ii) the mismatch between funders' expectations regarding metrics and the way civil society works is harming the development of the field.
The report is inconclusive regarding these issues, but it already provides a background and offers analyzes and indications on how to progress amidst the difficulties. Its publication is a record of the progress of the work, and a way to stimulate discussions and actions. The document was translated into Russian and Portuguese.
Here, we present the next steps on the journey to “measure what matters.”
What do people want
From the work carried out so far, we have some well-defined conclusions about what people active in the sphere of civil society want:
1. A way to measure how your work affects the complex mechanisms of social change within your communities;
2. A better way to structure – and potentially quantify – the data they already have about the intangible aspects of their work (e.g., relationships, trust, community ownership, empowerment, and how the community perceives its own resources and capabilities);
3. Guidance on how to organize measurement practices within institutions, recognizing that many of them do not have the necessary infrastructure to carry out complex analyses;
4. Peer support to combat the loneliness of the practice of measuring work, including sharing cases, examples and presentations on how the topic has been approached;
5. Better dialogue with funders, to ensure that they have a more complete view of the social change mechanisms they finance, rather than insisting on the metrics normally requested of institutions (which often have little relevance to the work in base).
What people don't want
The works also brought information about what people don't want:
1. A simplified model unable to adequately capture the complex mechanisms of social change in which they are involved;
2. Measurement systems that presuppose cultural homogeneity and fail to value the importance of context;
3. A linear system that presupposes simple and predictable notions of cause and effect, instead of viewing social change as a multiple and polynomial process that points in several directions at the same time;
4. Systems that are structured mainly around existing universal models – as in the case of reports “Vital Signs” (Vital Signs) or localized versions of the SDG indicators. Although some people find use in such systems for specific situations, customized methods are necessary to achieve full understanding;
5. More pressure from your donors to oversimplify the complex processes of social change observed (and often documented in an unstructured way) in your work in communities.
How people want to proceed
The process developed a good dynamic and is carried out by the participants themselves. They intend to proceed as follows:
1. With a structured peer learning process, which allows continuous experimentation and sharing among participants in the application of various measurement models;
2. Strengthening good examples – and there is no shortage of experiences that can be expanded. Some of them are:
The application of “ACT Framework” among Russian community foundations;
Longitudinal data on long-term processes of social change, including how beneficiaries of grants from the Fund for Reconstruction of Women in Serbia have promoted social and political change on a large scale and over several decades;
The organization's efforts Root Change to identify systems trust through network mapping, and how to adapt this method for each organization;
The Philanthropy Network for Social Justice in Brazil and its members: monitoring and evaluation of the COVID program, which encourages donations in communities through local donation programs and communication campaigns;
The work of #thehullwewant (the Hull we want), bringing together the wishes of the local population for the city;
O LIN Center in Vietnam, measuring the value of the network of relationships it helped create;
The commitment of Zambia Governance Foundation to measure the extent to which citizens are able to put aside the mentality of dependence, adopting a mentality focused on building collective consciousness, which leads to the development of the community they desire.
3. The development of tangible metrics to understand less tangible concepts (such as trust, the notion of community ownership, empowerment, or how the community perceives its own resources and capabilities) that more fully reflect the complex processes of social change in which organizations of community philanthropy are involved. This component will include experimenting with how such concepts can be understood and potentially quantified – or how they can be used in a structured way to complement and expand, through quantitative (and more tangible) metrics –, giving an idea, closer to reality, the impact generated by an organization;
4. Dialogue with funders to identify how the financing relationship can evolve into a situation where the issue of evaluation and measurement is a joint effort and not something imposed. This is a topic of interest to some of the funders who have participated in the discussions, as they recognize that their models sometimes fail to measure what really matters.
Next steps
As we move forward, we will continue this learning community, building on the trust and goodwill that has developed around the idea of progressing to a model with common principles that is broadly applicable to civil society. This will entail:
1. A real-time learning community, to develop the model based on local experimentation and sharing with peers, where experiences will be exchanged and ways of addressing common problems will be sought (for example, measuring “thick concepts”, or “thick concepts”). Within an 'appreciative inquiry' model, guidance, support and peer review will be available;
2. Opportunities for people to voluntarily participate in the learning community, in order to contribute to the development of a collective effort, with the dual objective of satisfying their own measurement-related needs and collaborating in search of new models to measure what matters ;
3. The development of a structured initiative, in which people commit to sharing their work and jointly developing a model that facilitates measurement. Such a model will have principles and a structure, but it will not be rigid and mechanical. Thus, it will contemplate the flexibility inherent to the principle of equifinality, that is, the idea that there are multiple correct ways of doing things and none is necessarily superior to any other;
4. Alignment with the process already underway at GFCF, where there will be quarterly monitoring with people who received contributions. The recent GFCF grant program has already established a baseline study and follow-up agreements with these grantees;
5. Openness to other actors outside the GFCF community to join the group, with financial support available, in certain cases, to enable local experiments;
6. A work plan for developing the methodology, writing it as the community moves forward and builds a system of collective ownership. It also involves working groups to address specific technical issues;
7. Wide dissemination of results, including postings on relevant websites. Content dissemination will include examples of local work led by members of the learning community;
8. The development of a donor panel to discuss changes within the funding community
The process property
This entire journey will be developed by the action of its participants, and they are the 'owners' of the process. Participants will commit to high standards of engagement, openness to learning, and the enjoyment of being part of a process designed to find ways to measure what really matters. The GFCF, Candid and PSJP will work together to facilitate the organic nature of the initiative and will take responsibility for recording its results.
The work will take the question of measurement out of the humdrum world of project management and accounting, providing an enriching experience designed to help the world 'build back better' (#BuildBackBetter) and to 'transfer power' (#SshiftThePower).
To see the full report document (in English), access here.
To see the full report document (in Portuguese), access here.
