Impact Is the Wrong Word

The Nonprofit world is awash in talk of impact. Simply add it before the word metric, or story and you have the content of most board presentations and donor pitches. But impact means a violent action.

Is that what nonprofits do? Can our actions in a community be reduced to a display of raw power? None of us would say that is the case, yet the language of impact conveys another story. It undermines our intent.

Nonprofits exist to influence change, not to violently cause it. Influence is built by trust rooted in understanding. These characteristics of lasting change are difficult to achieve; they are hard to measure and challenging to convey to donors. But when we slip into impact language we are letting go of our distinctive way of operating in the world.

Are you saying we don’t need to keep stats? No, I just wrote about measuring what matters recently. What I’m saying is that if you are guided only by “impact” and not by “influence” you will measure the wrong things.

How to focus on influence as a goal?

Below is content for paid subscribers to The Nonprofit Leader Newsletter. Each week focuses on issues that connect deeply with leaders in the mission-driven workplace. Consider joining this community. Many expense this as a subscription in their continuing education budgets.

How to focus on influence as a goal?

1. Know your purposeCan you explain what your organization does to a first grader or your grandmother in ways that they truly get what you do? Simplicity is difficult to achieve because it takes a deep level of understanding to reduce the definition to its essentials without loosing any of it’s key elements. However, more importantly than your first grader or grandmother understanding your mission, would your definition be the way your intended audience defines your purpose?Exercise: Set a timer for 5 minutes and write down what your nonprofit does in as simple, yet thorough way as possible. Review, refine, and repeat the timer until you feel that you have a definition that is clear and succinct. Try your new script for a week. When someone asks you what you do, use your simplified answer. Don’t try to impress anyone, just watch for the parts that are connecting and which are not. After a week of use and iteration, get feedback from your nonprofit’s constituents. Not the staff, not the donors, not the board, but from the people who are at the heart of your organization’s reason for being. How do they respond? What suggestions do they give you for improving? Now you have a well tested functional purpose statement to discuss with stakeholders. By starting with strangers and clients you will have now a greater sensitivity to the language of your mission. My bet is that it will have increasingly less “impact” language and more and more “influence” ways of describing.
2. Understand what creates changeYou are the expert in your field. A genuine expert is not someone who has arrived, but a perpetual student. You calling is toward increasing understanding of the dynamics of change for you intended audience. Do you not grasp the key milestones of improvement, but are you current in the research for your field? Curiosity is an essential feature of an influential leader.Exercise: Take 15 minutes to create or update your reading list. Who are the thought leaders you need to follow? What are the most important things written for your area? What are the classics that you need to keep in mind? Having problems use ChatGPT as integrated into Bing to create a list for you. Once you have a good list, create a reading plan. One hour a day will get you through an enormous amount of information. Consistency is the key.
3. Create measures for influence One of the reasons nonprofits revert to impact numbers is that few have done the work or defining the measures of genuine change. It is not that those markers are unmeasurable, its that they are largely ignored. Example: Some of the most important changes begins with shifts in attitude (how people frame their predicament). These powerful attitudes can be measured through tools like PERMA. The recent emphasis in understanding well being and positive psychology has dramatically improved the ability for nonprofit leaders to measure the process of change.
4. Connect with people Nonprofit leaders can get too much separation from the real women and men that their organization is helping. When this happens the mission increasingly sounds abstract and unfocused. Then their is a temptation to promote impact over influence because it sounds grand and important. Roberta Gratz in her book The Living City explains how many housing projects in the 1960s were approved because it was easier to show a congressional hearing a building that would solve poor housing, rather than the actual ways to strengthen a neighborhood. Ironically, those projects actually undercut genuine help and fostered greater crisis. When we loose touch with the actual people we are in business to help, these kinds of unintended consequences happen.Exercise: Set aside time every week to meet with people that your organization serves. There is no substitute for knowing the individuals you exist for.

Summary

Impact is not a good way to describe the influence of a nonprofit. Instead, 1) Know your purpose, 2) Understand what produces change, 3) Create metrics that matter for you, and 4) Connect with the real people you serve.

Enjoy this newsletter? Find more relevant content for nonprofit leaders at The Nonprofit Leader Newsletter. Try the newsletter for free for 1 month - take it for a test drive, kick the tires, try before you buy :) Special offer HERE