Outcome Standardization: A Transformative Approach to Measuring Social Impact
This white paper introduces outcome standardization for measuring social impact, enabling better assessment of progress on major societal challenges
BY CAMERON PERRA -- The world faces seemingly intractable challenges such as food insecurity, housing scarcity, and educational achievement gaps. Trillions of dollars have been invested in efforts to solve these problems, but how do we know if we are making progress at scale?
The thousands of programs in the United States and around the world working to solve these problems ask a similar question – what are my and my peers' efforts accomplishing? The clearest path to answering these questions is through defining standardized outcomes and measuring against them.
Outcomes connect a program's activities to the change desired for a beneficiary. Outcome examples can include:
- How many beneficiaries of a food security program obtained consistent access to food?
- How many individuals enrolled in a workforce development program attained a job?
Outcomes enable specificity when evaluating the change a program is creating, and their standardization allows for consistent quantification across programs, organizations, and geographies.