Theory of Change (TOC) is a method for planning, participation, and evaluation used to promote social change in organizations.
Created at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change in the 1990s and popularized by Carol Weiss, the term TOC outlines a series of desired and actual outcomes and linked rationales—all of which flow in chronological order.
The idea of modern businesses supporting social causes and giving back to their communities goes as far back as the era of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, wealthy philanthropists who donated more than $500 million to charities in their time. However, it wasn’t until 1953 that Howard Bowen coined the phrase “corporate social responsibility,” encouraging businesses to serve the needs of society.
Companies, investment managers, and nonprofits are under increasing pressure to improve their social & environmental impact. Doing so also means getting better at measuring and reporting their performance in a defensible, rigorous way.
These impact-related ‘pain points’ are strikingly similar across the public and private sectors and civil society but are sometimes expressed in different ways:
Corecentra recently attended this year’s Data for Impact Conference, which highlighted just how integral data has become to all facets of impact management & assessment.
The annual conference, which included impact-conscious partners from across the country, is part of the Forward Fest, the Wisconsin-based showcase of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. As expected, this year’s virtual conference brought together some of the brightest minds in data and social impact.
An organization looking to standardize its data should consider the following four steps as a guideline for their process. As organizational needs vary, the specific implementation of these stages may change, but the basic procedure should remain the same.
To maximize the value of data, it’s critical that organizations implement an effective and intuitive data standardization strategy. Good data management is a necessity for modern organizations and a prerequisite for growth & expansion.
Regardless of what the new normal will look like post-COVID, the pandemic has already induced deep shifts in the way organizations approach remote work. While some companies are still grappling with how long and to what extent they will permit remote work, other companies (Twitter and Facebook among them) have made remote work a permanent option.
Data is the fuel of the digital economy. But the benefits of good data extends well beyond businesses: data is essential to the productivity and success of modern for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Unfortunately, while 90% of nonprofits collect some data, “almost half say they aren’t fully aware of the ways data can (and does) impact their work.”
To better understand the applications of data for socially-impactful organizations, social sector experts have categorized data into two types: “data for action” and “data for impact.”
The last few months have highlighted long-standing and deep-rooted injustices in the US. The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color by nearly every measure: lives lost, risks taken by essential workers, economic hardship, etc. And the murders, lynchings, and brutalizing of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people over the last several centuries—at the hands of the police and white supremacists—have reminded us of the urgent and undeniable issues of systemic and institutional racism, state-sponsored violence, and deep-rooted bias and prejudice in our country.
Social Impact tracking has to change for the pandemic—and the tech has to change with it ‘Social impact’ is changing for many organizations — and our startup is changing to meet the moment Pre-COVID Before COVID, most companies, foundations, and NGOs thought about social impact tracking and reporting as a quarterly or annual exercise to engage donors, investors, and communities. …
