Measuring Social Impact

Community engagement activities can improve trust between residents and local governments and help collect data that increases the impact of your civic engagement projects. When collecting data, measuring social impact of a project is quite important. So what is social impact and how to measure it?

What is social impact?

To put it in a simple way, social impact is the effect of an activity on a community. It is usually aimed at creating positive change, e.g., by improving systems. In order to know how successful a social project was, whether it should be replicated, and how can it be improved, one has to measure nothing other than social impact.

Tips to measuring social impact

When measuring social impact, traditional vanity metrics often do not suffice. So how to measure what really matters? Here are some insights gathered by CitizenLab:

1. When establishing goals for a project, consider not just the aim for the process as a whole;

2. Pay attention to transparency of data collection process. One probably doesn't have everything they need, but they also don't need everything they have;

3. If there is too much data, make intentional choices and decide what is truly essential.

4. It is okay to focus on both quantity and quality. Quantitative metrics are good indicators of a project's immediate success, while qualitative metrics showcase the project's impact on a long-term scale.