…but so what?

I’d like to tell you a little (made up) story today…

A fictional engineering organisation (let’s call them Green Machines!) that manufactures components for electric cars has a vibrant Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda. As part of that, they invite their staff to take up to three days away from the factory floor every year to volunteer to be part of their schools outreach programme.

20 people sign up. Green Machines gives their volunteers a thorough training session so they all know what they need to do. The volunteers will be going into schools and running exciting, engaging and informative workshops for students about how they can reduce their energy consumption at home and at school.

The programme is a big hit. 90 schools register and they all take up the offer of sessions for two of their classes.

The workshops all go really well. The children have a brilliant time. They take part in lots of hands-on, messy experiments. They laugh a lot! And they learn some valuable lessons in the process. Their teachers seem happy too.

At the end of the year, Green Machines produce a report about their schools outreach programme. They proudly share their successes in recruiting and training 20 staff volunteers, visiting 90 schools, delivering 180 workshops and reaching 5,400 children! It’s been a huge success.

When it comes to drawing up their budget for the next financial year, Green Machines face a dilemma. Their own energy costs are spiralling, and they have to find a way to balance their books. The management team asks them to find something they can cut to make the numbers add up.

The CSR team wants to be able to argue their case to justify the continuation of their schools outreach programme - they are coming under a lot of scrutiny because it costs the business in lost income every time a staff volunteer is away from the factory floor and is in a school delivering a workshop. And not only that, the team actually wants to expand the programme, because their volunteers keep telling them how much the children got from taking part and they want more schools to benefit.

But all they have is a series of numbers about the volume of outreach activity they ran this year. They don’t have any evidence to support their argument or persuade their managers of the critical importance of their work with children and schools.

So the managers decide that this is where they will make their savings, and the CSR programme doesn’t run the next year. The volunteers go back to their positions on the factory floor full time.

***

And the story could end there. But what if Green Machines had asked themselves a simple question as they reviewed their numbers? What if they’d asked, “So what?”

So what? The numbers suggest that the programme was a success. But was it really?

Do Green Machines know if their programme successfully brought about the change they wanted to create for children and schools?

Did it create a return on the investment that the company made when they let their staff leave their posts to give something back to the community?

Were the children persuaded to think differently about the way they use energy and did they make any changes at home as a result? Did Green Machines manage to spread their message about the benefits of electric vehicles?

Did any of the students start to think about continuing to study science after their GCSEs or how they might get onto a path to a STEM-based career in a green transport company? Could Green Machines have done something to start a chain of events that might help their recruitment pipeline in the future?

Has the programme strengthened or improved Green Machines’ reputation in the community and the wider market?

I could go on!

THIS is exactly what I do. I help organisations to answer these “so what?” questions.

I help them go beyond the numbers and articulate the valuable difference they make to the lives and outcomes of children and young people, and the value this sort of activity brings to their own businesses.

This knowledge is so powerful.

So, maybe the outcome would have been different, had Green Machines’ CSR team had the evidence to build a compelling case about the importance of their schools outreach programme.

My clients use my impact measurement research to promote and showcase their work. They use it to raise additional funds and inform strategy and policy. They use it in their marketing materials, in their annual reports, in their bids for new jobs. They use it to expand their programmes - to recruit more volunteers, to reach more schools, to inspire more young people.

All of my impact measurement work starts with the creation of a compelling Theory of Change - a powerful tool that shows how you will deliver your desired outcomes and change. It is the first crucial step in the process of articulating your “so what?”

So. What about you? Have you thought about the impact that you have? What is your “so what?”

Drop me a line to book a free 30-minute discovery call so we can talk about starting to develop your Theory of Change now.