Since completing an honours thesis on the ‘challenges of measuring poverty’ in Laos four years ago, the challenges of measuring community development seem to be just as prominent.
Determining the success of community investment (or Monitoring and Evaluation – M&A) can be one of the most complicated and overwhelming aspects of the entire process. However, although measuring corporate community investment can take time, knowledge and commitment, keeping goals simple and clear can eliminate a lot of confusion. This piece reviews some of the definitions or steps related to measuring corporate community investment.
Feasibility
I have just about finished reading Three Cups of Tea, a book about an American called Greg Mortenson who wanted to build a school in remote Pakistan, but ended up building a bridge instead. Like many others, Greg never asked the community what it wanted.
The first step to measuring community investment needs to go back to the question, ‘What does the community want or need?’ By doing this, not only are you providing the community with an opportunity to say what is important to them, it is also more likely lead to community participation and engagement in the project. Participation and engagement leads to ownership, which leads to more sustainable projects. Remember, the overarching goal of all types of community work is to make the need for outside support obsolete. Ensuring ownership through participation is more likely to result in communities taking control.
Baseline Data
Once a project is feasible, the next step is to consider baseline data and indicators. Baseline data is used to measure future progress against, and is fundamental to evaluate success. Measuring the impact of community investment is not possible without this data; planning and collecting it is one of the most important aspects of a monitoring and evaluation framework. The primary task at this stage is to develop indicators that are relevant to both the business and the community. Focused indicators are important; they must be clear and relevant to the long-term goal of the project and cannot be changed once baseline data has been collected.
Inputs, outputs and impact
Companies that understand these three aspects of measuring community investment are more than half way to developing sustainable projects. For clarity, here is an overview:
Inputs: financial and in-kind contributions and employee time a company invests in a community investment project.
Outputs: The tangible returns for both the community and business. For example, if a company worked with Operation Smile, how many operations where completed? How many staff volunteered?
Impact: Determining impact is the challenging part of understanding the real success of community investment. ‘Impact’ refers to how corporate community investment has positively changed or affected a community. Again, using Operation Smile as an example, how has a young girl’s life changed after having her cleft palate fixed by Operation Smile? Is she accepted at her school? Can she speak properly now? Is she happier? This is where monitoring and evaluation can get tricky, mostly because:
- Measuring the impact of a project can rely heavily on a qualitative review of people’s thoughts and feelings. Generally, qualitative data is not given the validity and recognition it deserves, as often responses can’t be reduced to clear percentages and numbers
- Impacts are difficult to measure because there are numerous variables that influence the way populations and communities evolve. Government regulations, financial crises, or natural disasters are just a few that can affect the impact of a community investment project.
- Collecting data in a qualitative and interactive manner requires a significant understanding of the project, cultural barriers, language and experience in extracting information from people. This capacity is often absent, especially in NGOs working in less developed countries, and makes it difficult to collect meaningful information that can demonstrate the impact of a project.
- Indicators to measure the impact of community investment need to be specific and targeted, and the right people need to conduct the assessment. Data collection needs to allow for open-ended qualitative responses and assessors need to be willing to discuss and explain what people are saying.
Check out the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) for further information. There are more than 300 companies around the world using the LBG framework to measure the real value and impact of their community investment to both business and society.
This is a cross post to CSR Asia Weekly
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