Measuring and communicating impact

First things, first, why should you care about measuring impact? 

  • To understand if you’re making a difference 

  • Helps you communicate with funders, beneficiaries and other key stakeholders 

  • Motivate the project team and volunteers 

  • Set targets that can be improved on over time 

  • So you can take stock and adjust your strategy if needed  

What should you measure? 

This will vary widely from project, but you should aim to measure the things that:

  • Help people understand the benefit of your work, e.g. if you’re interested in boosting mental health, you may wish to measure how people feel when they use your space 

  • Enable you to measure impact over time, e.g. estimated number of users of a new green space per day

  • Help tell the story of your project, e.g. the number of volunteer hours 

“What gets measured, gets managed” – therefore we should measure what matters. 

Broadly speaking, there are two types of data you can measure.
Here’s a quick crash course in quantitative vs qualitative data: 

Qualitative (stories) 

  • Interpretation-based, descriptive 

  • Can help us why or how something happened 

  • Subjective and unique 

  • Example methods: interviews, quotes, focus groups, case studies. 

Quantitative (numbers) 

  • Numbers-based, countable or measurable 

  • Tells us how many, how much, or how often something happened 

  • Fixed and universal 

  • Methods: surveys and polling, observational counts. 

How to communicate impact? 

  • Write how you speak 

  • What would you be interested in hearing about? 

  • Keep it simple 

  • Focus on the main  

It’s often best to communicate impact through a killer combination of numbers and stories! 

What is the process for measuring impact? 

Here are the three key stages to measuring impact: 

1. At the start

Define the difference you want to make

  • What’s the impact you want to have? 

  • What does success look like? 

  • How can this be measured?

Make a plan and share it with your team  

  • What will you be measuring? 

  • When will you be measuring it? How often? 

  • Who will be involved in measuring it? Make sure you’ve discussed their role with them. 

  • What tools, resources, other considerations do you need for this? 

Set a baseline measurement to enable comparison later on 

  • Stat guru Hans Rosling says you should avoid presenting stats in isolation, e.g. instead of saying 80% of the allotment is now used. Say, use of the allotment has increased from 30 to 80%. This shows the difference over time and the impact. 

    2. Throughout the project 

  • Follow your plan and measure impact as you go 

  • Learn what works and what doesn’t to enable adjustments to your strategy in real time 

    3. At the end 

  • Compare results at the end of the project to the baseline measurement and any mid-point measurements 

  • Analyse the difference made: what went well, what could have been improved  

  • Celebrate your successes!  

  • Think about how to communicate impact in a simple and engaging way to stakeholders 

Our top tips

Google have a number of free tools that can help you: 

  • Google Forms: for surveys 

  • Google Docs: good for creating your impact measurement plan and keeping track of qualitative data 

  • Google Sheets: to keep track of data and numbers over time 

Explore more of our tips and guides below to get your community project up and running, and make the most of nature.