The voluntary sector has to get better at managing the balance between internal and external drivers for measuring impact
balancing charities impact
Is it possible to find a balance between internal and external drivers for measuring impact? Photograph: Stephen Hird/Reuters

When I asked David Robinson – founder of Community Links, chair of the Early Action Task Force, and one of the sector's great gurus – to give a keynote speech at a conference on impact leadership, I was pretty sure he'd deliver. I was right. He gave an inspirational speech that challenged the 350 people in the room to rethink their whole approach to leadership.

David told them to question relentlessly, change continuously, fail thoughtfully, collaborate ruthlessly and evaluate fearlessly – to focus on mission before organisation. As a charity leader, it's easy to become focused on your organisation's brand, funding or profile. Those things are important: they enable you to achieve your mission. But they aren't the end in itself.

As well as challenging the assembled leaders to focus firmly on mission rather than organisation, David threw down the gauntlet on impact measurement. As a practice it is led by funders, he argued, and charities engage in it more to meet funders' requirements than to learn about and improve what they do.

But is this true, and if so what are the implications?

Last year New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) surveyed 1,000 charities across the UK to find out.

It turns out that David is right on the money. When charities are asked why they've invested in impact measurement, the main reason they give is: to meet funders' requirements. More than half of all charities say this is the key driver. Much further down the list, only 5% say that the main driver is wanting to improve services.

It came as a surprise, then, when we found that the main benefit charities said they found when they did measure their impact was not increased funding – it was improved services.

It's a bit like getting fit. Being a card-carrying member of the 2013 New Year's Resolutions Brigade, this is an analogy that I feel I have a very personal relationship with. Many of us (yes, me) find the idea of going to a gym pretty repellent. There are so many other ways, I used to argue, that I could spend my time more enjoyably and productively than pounding on a treadmill or being lectured by some much fitter personal trainer.

But it turns out that when you start getting fit – once you've had the encouragement you need and made the initial effort – the benefits draw you in. In a few weeks I've gone from gym cynic to evangelist. Similarly, charities may drag their feet when it comes to starting to measure their impact, but once they get going they quickly see the benefits. They may be pushed to measure by funders, but as a result they get better at what they do.

So if the result is improved services, does it matter what the motivation is?

I think it does. If you measure impact to impress people outside your organisation, all you end up with is some nice marketing. For impact measurement to deliver real value, you need to be in the driving seat. You need to be committed to it as a leader, so that when your staff bring you data showing that a programme isn't working, you don't sweep it under the carpet, but embrace the opportunity to learn and improve. You need to embed it in your strategy, your structure, policies and procedures, so that it drives continuous improvement, is valued by staff, and isn't seen as a bureaucratic distraction.

But even if you agree with this in principle, you still have to follow the money, right? You can't have a conversation about measuring impact today without it drifting into what commissioners are looking for, and payment by results. You'd be a pretty brave chief executive to measure impact in a way you knew wouldn't work for commissioners. It seems the money is very firmly in the driving seat.

Is it possible to find a balance between these internal and external drivers for measuring impact? In our work on shared impact measurement frameworks, we're finding that balance is exactly what's needed. If a group of charities and social enterprises can lead on the development of an impact framework that they all believe in, while also having funders, commissioners and investors around the table as supporters, it may be possible to produce something that works for everyone.

Ultimately, we have to get better as a sector at managing this negotiation, this balancing act. Because otherwise, we're not in charge of the impact we're trying to deliver. And if that's the case, we have to ask, are we in charge of ourselves?

Tris Lumley is head of development at New Philanthropy Capital (NPC).
