Spreadsheets are Your Friend (Really!)
Love it or hate it, spreadsheets are the number one data tracking tool in many community-based organizations.
Love it or hate it, spreadsheets are the number one data tracking tool in many community-based organizations.
In past posts you may have followed our research project with the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets to develop a Farmers’ Market Impact Toolkit.This toolkit was piloted with 9 farmers markets in the summer of 2012 in British Columbia (Canada) and a final version of the toolkit is posted here on our website.
I came across this nifty tool when I attended the 6th ANSER conference in Victoria, June 6, 2013. The Community Capital Tool is a decision support and assessment tool, based on the community capital framework, that is designed to facilitate and ground community discussion about integrated planning and monitoring.
Are you about to engage in strategic or business planning in your organization? Planning offers a great point to think about what has and hasn’t worked in the past, how you create value (for community, within your business and organization), how you can create even more value, and ways to measure your success moving forward. Demonstrating Value can complement planning activities in a number of ways.
If you're in the business of green building or promoting sustainable building and communities, check out our new guide that has recently been added to Demonstrating Value's Resource Library. In it you'll find guidance on approaches to monitoring and assessing the mission-related impacts of green building and community design, which may be relevant for social enterprises (and programs) that seek to:
It’s not all about the games.
Keeping an eye on the right financial metrics can allow you to respond to issues before they spin out of control. Financial performance is a key part of the Demonstrating Value Framework.
There’s added value in using multiple frameworks when completing an impact evaluation. SROI – an evaluation framework growing in popularity – expresses value in monetized terms, and is one such framework that can be used in conjunction with Demonstrating Value.
These days, it’s not hard to find information online. Run a Google search – no matter how obscure – and you can instantly gain access to websites, magazines, newspapers and blogs dedicated to your topic. The difficulty then lies in sifting through the search results for quality content that’s current and relevant to your needs.