I attended a course today entitled Measuring What Matters – dealing with the issues of measuring, managing, monetizing and communicating social impact. It was fascinating. I have been trying to attend such a course for a couple of years now but the only ones I have seen available prior to today have been organized by the money-grabbing Criterion Conferences group – charging around $3000 for the privilege. Today’s course was one tenth of this cost and was hosted by Communities in Control – a group I have dealt with on many occasions. It was a terrific day and provided me with much food for thought in terms of what we actually do and how we might best provide statistical information to prove the benefit of our model from a social impact perspective.
As an added bonus today I commenced my plan to present at next year’s Communities in Control Conference by starting a conversation in regards to this with the powers that be who were present.
Matt, did you get any materials that you can share with the rest of us?
Yes. Some. But I think committee might be more interested in the links to orgs that deal in such issues that I picked up on the day.
Matt – Delighted to hear about your attendance at this course. Getting performance measures right is really difficult. They should be SMART – specific, measurable, accountable, results-oriented and time-bound. Easy to say but often hard to do. The next stage of development for our strategic and business plans is I suspect to move from output to outcome measures – and it’s the outcome measures that deal with social impact. Look forward to a conversation at a Committee meeting on this topic! Donald