How can you identify the most effective KPIs in a Social Impact role?

2 How to define your objectives and impact

Before you can select your KPIs, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to make a difference. You can use a theory of change or a logic model to map out your objectives and impact. A theory of change explains how your activities lead to your outputs, outcomes, and impact. A logic model shows the relationship between your inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact. Both tools can help you identify your assumptions, risks, and external factors that influence your impact.

3 How to choose relevant and meaningful KPIs

When defining objectives and impact, you should select KPIs that are relevant to your context, meaningful to stakeholders, and aligned with your mission and vision. Make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your KPIs should be clear and precise, quantifiable and verifiable, realistic and attainable, related to your objectives and impact, and have a defined timeframe and frequency. This will ensure that you are regularly monitoring and reporting on the needs and expectations of your stakeholders.

4 How to set SMART targets for your KPIs

After you have chosen your KPIs, you need to set targets for them. Targets are specific values or levels that you want to achieve or surpass for each KPI, which can help you track your performance, compare your results, and celebrate your achievements. To ensure that your targets are effective, you can use the SMART framework. Your targets should be clear and precise, quantifiable and verifiable, realistic and attainable, related to your objectives and impact, and have a defined timeframe and frequency. This will ensure that your targets address the needs and expectations of your stakeholders, while allowing for regular monitoring and reporting.

6 Examples of KPIs for social impact roles

Identifying the most effective KPIs for your social impact role is important and can be done by looking at different sectors and domains. For example, in education, KPIs could include the number of students enrolled, attendance rate, graduation rate, test scores, student satisfaction, teacher retention, learning outcomes, and employability. In health, KPIs could focus on the number of patients treated, mortality rate, morbidity rate, infection rate, recovery rate, patient satisfaction, staff retention, health outcomes, and quality of life. When looking at the environment sector, KPIs might include the amount of greenhouse gas emissions reduced, amount of waste diverted, amount of water saved, amount of energy generated, number of trees planted, biodiversity index, environmental outcomes, and social benefits. In terms of poverty reduction KPIs could be the number of people lifted out of poverty, income level, expenditure level, savings level, access to basic services, food security housing security and livelihood opportunities. Lastly for human rights KPIs could include the number of people reached; number of cases handled; number of violations reported; number of resolutions achieved; number of policies influenced; number of awareness campaigns conducted; human rights outcomes; and social justice.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?