Developing Success Indicators

Why?

To build partnership muscle around evaluating your impact and effectiveness

What’s the Result?

Building in good processes that will allow you to engage in evaluation easily, effectively and on an ongoing basis is one of the most important components of partnership success.  Identifying success indicators provides you and your partner tangible targets to measure the effectiveness of your partnership and programs.

Materials
Impact Measurement Plan, pens

Time: 120 minutes

Step I:  Identifying your outcomes

  1. Refer to the “The Tool: So-that Chain” tool to identify the outcomes your partnership is working towards.
  2. Prioritize the short-term outcomes you want to measure and develop success indicators for. In the ESL example found in the “The Tool: So-that Chain” tool example the following are two short term outcomes to develop success indicators for:

Our students have improved English skills (Short-term outcome)

so that

They have increased confidence in English (Short-term outcome)

Step II:  Identifying your success indicators

  1. Develop tangible and measurable success indicators for your outcomes
  2. Identify no more than 2 or 3 measurable indicators for each outcome

Example

OUTCOME INDICATOR
Our students have improved English skills # and % of students who can complete a job application # and % of students who get XXX score in an intermediate English level test
Our students have increased confidence in English % of participants surveyed who have increased confidence in conducting a job interview

Tips for developing indicators:

  • Can you reasonably and manageably collect data on the indicator?
  • Can it be seen, heard or read?
  • Is the indicator useful? Will it really help you understand if your program is working?

Step III:  Identify and develop your measurement tool

  1. Identify the measurement tool required to measure each indicator

Examples of tools:

  • Surveys: online, in person, on phone, as part of an event
  • Interviews: in person or on phone; one-on-one or focus groups
  • Case records: including progress against client plans
  • Tests: Physical/cognitive
  • Official records: school, medical
  • Observations & reports

Pro Tip: Data collection must fit your organization’s time, ability, budget in order to be sustained[PC1] !

  • Develop the system and process required to implement the tool

Example

OUTCOME INDICATOR Measurement Tool
Our students have improved English skills # and % of students who can complete a job application # and % of students who get XXX score in an intermediate English level test Example job applications to be completed in class   ESL test
Our students have increased confidence in English % of participants surveyed who have increased confidence in conducting a job interview Online Survey

Step III:  Putting it all together: Impact measurement plan

  1. Create your own Impact measurement plan
  2. Discuss your plan with your partner to assess the feasibility of the plan
  3. Review and analyze the data with your partner on a quarterly/ bi-annual basis

Pro Tip: Start simple and small. Start with measuring 1 or 2 indicators and then reviewing the data with your partner to assess whether the data is useful and effectively measures the impact of your program. Adjust your impact measurement plan accordingly.

Impact Measurement Plan

Outcome Indicator Measurement Tool