Beyond the hype: Designing your development programs with measurable impact
Corporations and government agencies alike have committed to creating programs that have meaningful impact on society. However, many organizations struggle to turn their good intentions into tangible and measurable results.
They get caught up in the day-to-day work, losing sight of the bigger impact or the real impact on the people they serve. Sometimes they get caught up in the hype, the creative ideas, or the press releases.
What we need now, more than ever, are programs with real and measurable impact.
We asked Czarina Medina-Guce, PhD, subject matter expert of Inquirer Academy on social development and impact assessments, for her thoughts on this.
Articulate impact from your client or user’s perspective
Before adopting buzz words such as sustainability or community empowerment, first articulate scenarios that represent the successes that could emerge from your program. Imagine the impact of your program from the perspective of your clients or the community you serve. What do you want their program experience to become? What pain points in their current conditions would be alleviated through your program? How do you envision your users or communities’ lives improving because of your interventions?
Human-centered design thinking methodologies refer to this as empathizing with the users and clients. This essential first step is encapsulated in setting a program vision, even before the project management is initiated.
While impact is a long-term goal, development is evaluated not only as an end product, but also as a process of changing mindsets, behaviors and ways of doing things. This is why your client or community’s change experience must first be articulated, because how they feel and perceive your program’s contribution to their lives as it unfolds is as important as your impact endgame itself.
Spell out the pathways toward achieving your impact
Every program has its set of levers and limitations. Every development-oriented program aims to achieve broader societal outcomes than its resources can directly support. As such, your program design must have clear logical pathways that connect your capacities to the change scenarios for your users and communities.
Capacities, in this sense, refer not only to your program’s funds, but also your organization’s people, networks, partnerships and political influence—currently and potentially at hand—in relation to your program vision.
In development practice, this pathway-setting process is referred to as creating your theory of change (TOC). As a planning and evaluation tool, the TOC spells out the logic of how exactly your program progresses toward your articulated impact.
The pathways include your program’s inputs (resources and capacities) and modalities of their use (for example, upskilling activities or systems improvement interventions). These inputs and modalities are connected to the components of your user or community’s change scenarios, thereby clarifying how you can optimize the incremental contributions of your capacities to achieving your program’s impact.
Your TOC’s change pathways will also enable you to focus your energy and attention, differentiating what you will do (certain and nonnegotiable), what you could do (a feasible stretch given opportunities) and what you will not do (outside of your resource and commitment parameters).
Achieving impact is a long game, requiring a laser-like focus and built-in momentum without blindsiding opportunities for leverage. Therefore, it will benefit your program implementers to be guided by your priority parameters in the day-to-day operations.
Monitor and measure your program impact pathways
What you do not monitor gets sidetracked—because what’s out of sight is out of mind. At the same time, what you do not measure, you cannot improve. For these reasons, developing a clear monitoring and evaluation (M&E) protocol for your program is crucial in bringing your program’s impact vision to life.
Three key decision points shape effective M&E strategies. The first concerns the selection of impact variables and indicators, which should sufficiently represent your TOC change pathways.
A good set of variables and indicators does not underrepresent your change outcomes, such as being limited to activity outputs that fail to provide insight into whether your program is progressing toward the envisioned impact.
The second decision point is strategizing evidence collection, which typically involves a combination of narratives (qualitative) and statistics (quantitative).
The emerging evidence constitutes the ‘flesh’ of your program impact claim, and ensures that you can clearly connect your results with the changes you cause or contribute to.
Lastly, the third decision point concerns how to learn from your M&E, because impact-oriented programs operate in social contexts that evolve in complexity and intensity.
Stated differently, the external context of your users and communities will eventually change throughout your program implementation, through factors usually outside of your control (such as the state of the economy and environmental changes).
Your capacities may also change, expectedly or unexpectedly, as you implement your program. As such, it is necessary that your change evidence, regardless of your progress, makes sense as learning points for your program strategy and planning.
Impact-oriented programs can incorporate adaptability and responsiveness into their design through a well-structured TOC and a robust M&E protocol. INQ
Dr. Medina-Guce will facilitate an in-person workshop titled “Creating Measurable and Sustainable Impact: Designing Programs for Real Change” on Oct. 23. The eight-hour course will be beneficial to businesses and government agencies with programs aiming for social change.
For your employees’ learning and development, Inquirer Academy can help you in designing and facilitating a training program. For more information, write to ask@ inquireracademy.com, or send an SMS to 0919-3428667 and 0998-9641731.
