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The Importance of Impact
As you build a business or nonprofit, you should take time to establish processes for measuring and reporting your organization’s social and environmental impact. With conscious consumerism and impact investing becoming mainstream, stakeholders are demonstrating preferences to engage with impact-oriented organizations.
Since entrepreneurs often perceive tracking impact as daunting and cumbersome, Social Sector Network has developed a concise method to help you get started with impact measurement and reporting.
SDG Impact Measurement and Reporting Toolkit
Based on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, our method requires you to address six questions covering impact measurement, analysis, and communication. Additionally, we have designed a toolkit, consisting of five main worksheets, which you can download below:
1. How do the SDGs align with your organization’s objectives and operations?
- List all 17 SDGs.
- For each SDG, consider if your organization’s objectives/operations have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on the SDG.
- Work to improve negative and neutral scores.
2. What specific SDGs does your organization support? (Select 2-3)
- Identify the SDGs that have the strongest alignment with your organization’s objectives and operations.
- Select 2-3 of these well-aligned SDGs to prioritize.
3. What metrics and methods does your organization use to measure SDG impact?
- Go to the United Nations page for the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Click on a goal that your organization supports.
- Scroll down to the “Facts and Figures” section, and select “Goal Targets”.
- Use the targets to choose 1 or 2 key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Determine a method to collect and analyze relevant KPI data.
- Repeat the process for each of your high-priority SDGs.
4. How does your organization set SDG impact objectives?
- Spend 2-3 months measuring KPIs and analyzing weekly changes.
- Use historical data to create “Impact Goals” for the next six months (e.g. teach 10 children to read in month 1; 15 in month 2; 25 in month 3, etc.)
- Repeat this process for all your high-priority SDGs.
5. How does your organization report its impact on the SDGs?
- Write down your data collection methods.
- Describe your processes for analyzing KPI data and generating impact reports.
- Identify key communication channels you can use to inform stakeholders of your SDG impacts.
6. Do your organization’s mission, vision, and leadership communications include the SDGs?
- Use a Venn diagram to compare your organization’s core communications with your SDG themes by writing keywords in the relevant spaces.
- As you communicate impact and performance to stakeholders, you should emphasize the keywords in the middle of the Venn diagram because they will best-demonstrate your organization’s natural alignment with the SDGs.
- If you have very few keywords in the middle, consider altering your mission, vision, and leadership communications to reflect the SDGs.
Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals
Once you get started with the SDGs, you will experience new opportunities for partnerships, funding, and community building. By associating your brand with specific impact objectives, you stand to build strong relationships with like-minded stakeholders who care about similar issues.
Start Measuring SDG Impact Today!
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