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Map Your Impact Strategy to Outcome Management
Outcome Management defines, measures, and evaluates an organization’s outcome strategy in one place. Learn how to make a measurable and actionable impact strategy with Outcome Management.
Required Editions
| Available in: Education Cloud, Energy and Utilities Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, and Public Sector Solutions. View edition availability. |
Organizations of all types—including nonprofits, grant funders, government agencies, and companies—are eager to track the change they’re making in the world as outcomes. They can be measuring outcomes such as:
- Increase academic performance.
- Decrease carbon emissions.
- Increase family stability.
- Decrease childhood hunger.
- Improve diversity, equity, and inclusion.
After defining their strategy for making change, organizations often struggle to make their strategy actionable and data-driven. Outcome Management fills that gap by making it easier to define your strategy, collect your data, track progress in one place, and evaluate the effectiveness of your programs.
Logic Models, Theories of Change, and Outcome Management
Learn how common methodologies to promote social change map to Outcome Management.
| Typical Logic Model/Theory of Change Category | How It’s Represented in Outcome Management |
|---|---|
| Inputs: What you need in order to deliver what you do. | Tracked outside of Outcome Management. For example, budgets, staff time, and facilities. |
| Activities: What you do or plan to do to achieve your desired outcomes. | Outcome activities connect outcomes to things you’re doing that drive the outcome forward. For example, connect programs or benefits to outcomes using outcome activities. |
| Outputs: The amount of product or service that’s delivered if you accomplish your planned activities as intended. | Indicator definitions and indicator assignments represent outputs when linked to programs. Set an indicator assignment’s Type as Program to show that it’s measuring Program performance. Example outputs:
|
| Outcomes: The changes expected for participants or stakeholders as a result of your organization’s activities defined at the strategic level. | Outcome records represent outcomes. It’s easy to get confused between outputs and outcomes. Outputs refer to the immediate and typically tangible things you can measure as part of delivering your programs. Some example outputs are pounds of food distributed or the number of participants served. Outcomes are often less tangible and harder to measure. Outcomes refer to the changes that participants experience as a result of your programs. Some example outcomes are increased food security or increased self-confidence. |
| Impact: The sustainable, long-term change that’s a result of achieving your desired outcomes over a period. | Tracked outside of Outcome Management. |
| Logic Model/Theory of Change | Impact strategies group outcomes and represent a logic model, theory of change or other strategy. |
Outcome Management introduces additional objects to pick up where your logic model left off. For example, most logic model templates don’t ask you to define how your outcomes are measured. In Outcome Management, indicator definitions and indicator assignments make measuring your progress clearer.
Logic models also don’t hold you accountable to progress. In Outcome Management, indicator performance periods let you set time-bound target and baseline values, making it easier than ever to monitor your strategy.
