I thought it best to start from the beginning, start from the accepted norm, start from "The Impact Spectrum". In what we might call the mainstream of impact evaluation, impact is something that is projected into a domain. A common sense view might say it is straightforward, one thing causes another, its linear too, and rational. But is impact so squeaky clean?
You see, you start with what you want to do, helping people, educating them, building a cool piece of technology that is going to change the world, or simply starting a business - and then you look at your activities, what you do to build or promote your thing. Your project begins with activities.
These activities lead to outputs - tangible results, immediate results - where people engage with your project. It could be a seminar, 50 people turning up to a nutrition class, 100 villages taking part in a water well project meeting, a signed agreement with a funder, or a final piece of kit you have designed that works, washes clothes, or makes a car go faster. These are tangible, immediate - they are the outputs.
So we have a project, our activities and out outputs. But so what? Big deal? Your car goes faster, but nobody has bought it yet. Your village project had 100 people turn up, but what changed after they went home? What is beyond outputs?
Outcomes is the term in favour these days. Your ouputs are immediate, self evident. But your outcomes are the effect you have had on people and places, they are slightly more complex perhaps, more medium term. An outcome might be that your new car engine makes your car get pole position in a race, or that those people who took your class now know more about eating healthily. An outcome speaks to what has changed for people involved, a change in knowledge, behaviour, in relationships.
But again, this may not last? You may loose the following race, no? People may show their new knowledge of healthy eating by talking to you about it or by showing you their new meal time delights? But they may just as easily not continue eating the good stuff and revert back to what they are use to. So, what is next?
The last part of the impact spectrum is the biggy - Impact itself. Long term or significant change, "making a difference" to people's ongoing behaviours, practices. They win the racing car league that year thanks to your engine - that's pretty significant. They loose weight and improve their health according to doctor's reports 6 months later. The village now has a water well that most of the families are using, where they didn't have easy access to clean drinking water before. These are impacts. They are longer term and significant, representing real change.
This seems fairly straight forward to easy to get. From project, through activities to impact and change. But impact may be on different people - not just the ones in your project or the driver of your car. You may have Secondary Impacts on the company that used to bring water to the village, or on the psychological health of your car racing rivals. Thus we have secondary impact, and perhaps tertiary level impacts - up to 5 levels deep is possible to follow according to some researchers (e.g.your engine affects your driver, he wins the racing championship, which makes the rival team lose, their driver quits, he can't get another job, he looses his house, his kids don't graduate from high school etcetc - its can go on and on to many levels).
So its not so simple at the far right hand side of the diagram is it? In fact, its not so simple at all. Whose impact is this? Who defines the "better water access" or the "faster car", who "attributes" it to your project or your engine, and not the great new tyres? How do you measure this? Should you measure it? What if by you measuring the impact, asking people, checking the car, reviewing the project, this process provokes people to say it was actually their tyres that helped more, or that they knew the villagers didn't actually use your new water well as much as they said they did? The far right hand side of the diagram is just the start of critiquing the impact spectrum.
We are increasingly aware of complex systems, groups of people and things interacting around supposed impact. Proving how successful you are may be more to do with your engine business, or your development business than to do with "facts on the ground" at the village or the racetrack. It is understanding both the site of impact and the sites of your project in the first place, that helps us unravel impact and the need to claim impact.
The Impact Spectrum is a useful diagram to show the logical processes of impact, and can be used in the field. However, it is not the end of the Impact game, it is just the start. A squeaky clean start, before we get our feet dirty.
You see, you start with what you want to do, helping people, educating them, building a cool piece of technology that is going to change the world, or simply starting a business - and then you look at your activities, what you do to build or promote your thing. Your project begins with activities.
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| The Impact Spectrum - diagram |
These activities lead to outputs - tangible results, immediate results - where people engage with your project. It could be a seminar, 50 people turning up to a nutrition class, 100 villages taking part in a water well project meeting, a signed agreement with a funder, or a final piece of kit you have designed that works, washes clothes, or makes a car go faster. These are tangible, immediate - they are the outputs.
So we have a project, our activities and out outputs. But so what? Big deal? Your car goes faster, but nobody has bought it yet. Your village project had 100 people turn up, but what changed after they went home? What is beyond outputs?
Outcomes is the term in favour these days. Your ouputs are immediate, self evident. But your outcomes are the effect you have had on people and places, they are slightly more complex perhaps, more medium term. An outcome might be that your new car engine makes your car get pole position in a race, or that those people who took your class now know more about eating healthily. An outcome speaks to what has changed for people involved, a change in knowledge, behaviour, in relationships.
But again, this may not last? You may loose the following race, no? People may show their new knowledge of healthy eating by talking to you about it or by showing you their new meal time delights? But they may just as easily not continue eating the good stuff and revert back to what they are use to. So, what is next?
The last part of the impact spectrum is the biggy - Impact itself. Long term or significant change, "making a difference" to people's ongoing behaviours, practices. They win the racing car league that year thanks to your engine - that's pretty significant. They loose weight and improve their health according to doctor's reports 6 months later. The village now has a water well that most of the families are using, where they didn't have easy access to clean drinking water before. These are impacts. They are longer term and significant, representing real change.
This seems fairly straight forward to easy to get. From project, through activities to impact and change. But impact may be on different people - not just the ones in your project or the driver of your car. You may have Secondary Impacts on the company that used to bring water to the village, or on the psychological health of your car racing rivals. Thus we have secondary impact, and perhaps tertiary level impacts - up to 5 levels deep is possible to follow according to some researchers (e.g.your engine affects your driver, he wins the racing championship, which makes the rival team lose, their driver quits, he can't get another job, he looses his house, his kids don't graduate from high school etcetc - its can go on and on to many levels).
So its not so simple at the far right hand side of the diagram is it? In fact, its not so simple at all. Whose impact is this? Who defines the "better water access" or the "faster car", who "attributes" it to your project or your engine, and not the great new tyres? How do you measure this? Should you measure it? What if by you measuring the impact, asking people, checking the car, reviewing the project, this process provokes people to say it was actually their tyres that helped more, or that they knew the villagers didn't actually use your new water well as much as they said they did? The far right hand side of the diagram is just the start of critiquing the impact spectrum.
We are increasingly aware of complex systems, groups of people and things interacting around supposed impact. Proving how successful you are may be more to do with your engine business, or your development business than to do with "facts on the ground" at the village or the racetrack. It is understanding both the site of impact and the sites of your project in the first place, that helps us unravel impact and the need to claim impact.
The Impact Spectrum is a useful diagram to show the logical processes of impact, and can be used in the field. However, it is not the end of the Impact game, it is just the start. A squeaky clean start, before we get our feet dirty.
