Are positive outcomes good enough? Impact's overrated...

For the last three decades, social enterprises, non-profits and non-government organizations have focused on impact, demonstrating results. Measuring impact indicates to funders that their contributions are creating positive community change. But measuring impact, if not prohibitively expensive or nearly impossible, is at a minimum complex. 

Before an organization can measure impact, it needs to link its output to outcomes. Outcomes are defined as lasting changes in the lives of individuals, while impact is sustainable change to a particular community or society.  Using these definitions, let’s use an example from the reading to illustrate how outputs link to outcomes.  

The Aravind Eye Hospital in India conducts eye surgeries (outputs) that result in people being able to see (outcomes).  Here it’s easy to see positive outcomes resulting from an organization’s output.  

Anecdotally, Aravind can link outcomes to societal impact.  For instance, someone who was blind prior surgery would have limited employment options, but that same individual after receiving corrective surgery to restore his sight would be availed of new employment opportunities. 

One can envision the compounding effect for society of giving thousands of people the ability to see.  The result being more people can contribute to society in ways they were unable to previously due to disability.  But this stretch between outcomes and impact is not rooted in data. 

In fact, Ebrahim and Rangan do not give a good example of a firm that effectively measures impact.  However, one could argue that the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), because of its scope, a “’pipeline’ of interventions ‘from cradle to college to community’”, is uniquely positioned to measure impact.  Here’s one way HCZ could measure its community impact. 

A sample of HCZ’s infant clients, who were born into poverty, could be tracked over their lifetimes.  If those infants mature into adults who do not live in poverty, HCZ could make a case statistically that it is in fact reducing poverty, thereby showing community impact. 

A lifetime study of HCZ clients would be difficult and expensive to conduct but not impossible.  But HCZ has been so effective at improving the lives of its clients through positive (outcomes) is it worth the effort to conduct a study that seeks to show impact?  Or is the anecdotal argument sufficient?