S O C I A L I M PA C T A N A LY S I S

Module 2
Readings
1 HR
BUILDING AN
I M PA C T F R A M E W O R K

Imagine you’re a leader working with inner-
city youth in Philadelphia. You observe
that many of these kids are struggling with
childhood obesity and pre-diabetes. You
think this is happening in part because
they lack access to safe, clean places to
play outdoors. As a result, they’re spending
that parents save, number of calories burned
by kids. What should you prioritize? How
should you tell a cohesive and accurate
story of your impact? How should you
know what services or programs to keep
investing in vs. what experiments should be
abandoned because they aren’t having the

Analysis
far too much time in front of screens and impact you intended?

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limited time outdoors playing with friends.
To address this need, you’ve set up a One place to start is by developing an

Impact
Impact Model that focuses on these 3

Impact
urban areas. dimensions:

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Fast forward two years. You’ve built your + Breadth: How many people are

Social
you serving?
seems to be going great. Kids are playing

+ACUMEN
+ Depth: How are you changing
on the swings and slides for hours after
people’s lives?
school. Parents are telling you that they
love having a safe, clean space for their + Focus on Your Target Population:
kids to go. You’ve added a program for
community mentors to supervise the kids population are you reaching?

on the playground. You feel like things are

really working—but how do you know? It
feels like you could measure your impact in
tons of different ways—number of kids who
use the playground every day, reductions in
screen time, number of babysitting hours
In this Reading, we’ll walk you through these
dimensions to help you understand their
importance—and how you can use them as
a starting point to tell a clear, coherent and
compelling story of your impact.

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BREADTH
O F I M PA C T
Breadth of Impact
Breadth of impact, or scale, relates to
the product or service you are delivering.
The scale of the issues in today’s world,
including the pervasive lack of access to
basic goods and services, demands solutions
that are able to change millions of lives.
Scale is also an excellent indicator that
the market values the good or service
being sold, particularly through growth
and repeat customers. In the majority
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a good way to track the breadth of impact.
Therefore we start measuring breadth as
the direct number of goods or services
distributed, delivered, or sold by a company
or organization. This gives us a good sense
of the breadth of reach of the company in
Analysis
terms of numbers of lives reached. Because
Analysis
the customer, but potentially their whole
Impact
household, where appropriate we calculate
Impact
breadth by applying a multiplier assumption
Social
Social
+ACUMEN
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BREADTH
O F I M PA C T

aggregating quantities (such as crop

Impact’ consists of two parts: purchased from a farmer), we might apply
different assumptions to turn aggregate
+ Number of goods or services
sold, distributed, performed, or
implemented out how many farmers your new irrigation

Analysis
+ Multiplier of the number of people
total crop and then divide by the average
each unit of (1) affects, if greater

Analysis
individual yield.
than 1

Impact
Risk of Over- or Underestimating
If the multiplier is a household, we

Impact
Your Impact
frequently use census data, often validated Counting customers for a business or

Social
by Lean Data, (such as ‘persons per

Social
household’) to approximate the average of but there are some important pitfalls to
household members in a given country or be aware of that may lead you to over or

+ACUMEN
region. The multiplier assumption can vary understate the breadth of your impact.
depending on your geography, sector, and
+ Depending on how you track
sales, make sure to avoid counting
to have your assumption stated explicitly repeat customers. An example of a
and cite your source of the information. repeat customer is someone who
That way, when you start collecting data and purchases clean water once per
learn more about the reality, you will be able week from a company. The water
to understand where to make changes in business should report its total
your initial assumptions. number of customers reached—
taking out duplicate users.
Turning Aggregate Numbers into
+ Similarly, if you are a foundation
or investor looking to calculate
Occasionally, where the organization or
the impact of your entire portfolio
program is not directly tracking individual
or projects, you need to avoid
customer sales numbers, but rather

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BREADTH
O F I M PA C T

counting the same customers months or longer to sell or give

that may be served by multiple the product to end customers.
groups you fund. For example, if Depending on your business
several companies in a portfolio of model, differentiating between
projects of investments are serving number of units sold and number
the same customer (or several of units being properly used by
services that an organization end customers can be important.

Analysis
provides are serving the same

Analysis
customer), be careful to avoid
Example: So if you were that social
multiple counting of the same
entrepreneur setting up playground sites,

Impact
customers when aggregating
your breadth of impact would be the

Impact
impact.
number of kids who use the playground
+ Additionally, sales numbers may every year and you could also report on the

Social
not equate to end customers

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reached. This could be because

+ACUMEN
of the length of the useful life of Number of kids who use the playground
the product (months or years); each year * average household size = number
because of loss or wastage (in
case the product, for example a playground per year
bed net, is not used properly by
the end customer); or because As stated earlier, the key is making sure that
you are not selling directly to end you are being explicit in your assertions.
I.e. in this example, make sure you are
last situation, your enterprise
might sell to distributors, agents,
or agencies who take weeks, vs. just the kids.

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DEPTH
O F I M PA C T

Depth of Impact + Increasing the number of days a

While many companies and organizations parent can send a child to school
report on breadth, or number of people they
+ Changing the way someone thinks
reach, far fewer can explain exactly how
about a political issue
peoples’ lives of change as a result of those
interactions.
Most impact measurement practice relies

Analysis
Sasha Dichter, Acumen’s Chief Innovation on “output” measurement. That is, counting
the widgets produced in the world and

Analysis
“the holy grail of impact measurement.” making assumptions that those widgets

Impact
When you begin to assess your organization do wonderful things. By contrast, direct
data collection from end-customers across

Impact
or enterprise’s depth of impact, you should
ask: how did our product, service, or “outcomes” remains rare.

Social
intervention meaningfully

Social
improve someone’s life? You
should also be open to the

+ACUMEN
counter-factual—or the idea
that your product or service
might have no effect or a
negative effect.

Improvements to someone’s
life could take many forms
such as:

+ Saving someone money

+ Reducing the amount of

kerosene gas inhaled in
homes

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DEPTH
O F I M PA C T

So how should you identify the key ways in + How has your quality of life [improved/
which your customers’ lives are changing got worse] since using the product?
as a result of your interventions? Start by (this is the most important question!)
asking your end-users! To do so, you can
+ Have you experienced any challenges
build a lean survey that asks questions
with using (product/service)?
about how your customers have used the
product or service—and whether it was o Yes, please explain:_______________

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meaningful to them. Sample questions o No

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are included in the following chart. It
helps if you initially ask your users open-
There are several ways your program,

Impact
ended questions that will elicit qualitative
product, or service could have changed

Impact
responses. Then, you can code your data
people’s lives—which of course is great!
for themes. These themes can eventually
However, for the sake of simplifying your

Social
become the primary categories that you use
impact measurement, you’ll want to hone

Social
to understand your depth of impact.
in on just the key dimensions of their lives

+ACUMEN
that have been most meaningfully changed
SAMPLE DEPTH OF IMPACT
as directly as possible by your intervention.
SURVEY QUESTIONS
This will allow you to focus your data
collection efforts on being as streamlined
+ What were you using for (purpose)
and consistent as possible—rather than
before purchasing (product/service)?
trying to track down every little factor or
+ Has your quality of life changed aspect of their life that could have been
because of (product/service)? affected.
+ Very much improved
So how do you narrow in on your key “depth
+ Slightly improved
dimensions”? There is a bit of both art and
+ No change science required to distill the ways that your
interventions have changed people’s lives. To
+ Got slightly worse
focus your initial efforts we suggest honing
+ Got much worse in on your top 3-5. Remain open to changing
those categories if you start to see different
trends in the data over time. Ideally, these

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DEPTH
O F I M PA C T

changes should be things that are as directly + Increasing number of minutes kids get
attributable to your product, service or physical activity per day
program as possible.
+ Improving a child’s physical and
emotional quality of life
Example: So if you were that social
entrepreneur setting up playground sites,
you could conduct a short survey, or focus

Analysis
group, with parents asking them to tell you focus on data collection techniques you can
use to measure performance against these

Analysis
about what is most important to them.
dimensions.

Impact
Impact
depth of impact, which could be:

Social
+ Decreasing parents’ feelings of anxiety

Social
because they know their kids have a
safe, supervised place to play

+ACUMEN

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FOCUS ON YOUR
TA R G E T P O P U L AT I O N

Focus on Your Target Population
The last dimension of your Impact Model
is assessing the degree to which you are
reaching your target population. You’ll need
to ask: am I reaching the people I intend to?
For example:
its customers were and on whether it was
reaching the poorest people in its areas of
operation.
In early 2014, our team at Acumen worked
with Ziqitza to train call center employees
in two states, Punjab and Orissa, to pose a

Analysis
set of 10 questions to customers. We drew

Analysis
Code, you hope to reach African those questions from the Progress Out of
American young women. Poverty Index (PPI), a survey developed by

Impact
+ If you’re ConsejoSano, you hope to the Grameen Foundation. The PPI survey

Impact
reach the Hispanic population in uses straightforward, neutral questions,

the United States. such as “How many members does your

Social
household have?” and “What is the main
+ If you’re the African Leadership

Social
source of lighting fuel for your household?”
Academy, you hope to educate
in order to gather data on poverty levels

“the next generation of African
leaders.”
Determining whether you’re reaching your
target population can sometimes be harder
example of Ziqitza Health Care Limited,
a social enterprise in India that provides
ambulance services and aims to make those
services accessible to all segments of society.
The company, founded in 2004, operates
nearly 1,000 ambulances in six Indian
states and answers more than 2.5 million
history, Ziqitza lacked reliable data on who
+ACUMEN
among a given population. The simplicity of
the questions makes it easy to administer
the survey during a short phone interview.
Training Ziqitza’s call center operators
took just one day, and Ziqitza was able to
integrate the survey effort seamlessly into
its operations. Within a month of that initial
training, the company had surveyed 1,000 of
its customers.
The results showed that three-quarters
of Ziqitza customers were living below
the World Bank poverty line of $2.50 per
day and that the company was serving
women—pregnant women in particular—at

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FOCUS ON YOUR
TA R G E T P O P U L AT I O N

a disproportionately high level. The survey How exactly do you collect data on your
also revealed areas for improvement. target population? There are two ways:
In rural Orissa, for example, Ziqitza’s
penetration among those below the poverty + you can either ask people directly
line fell short of the state average by 11 if they identify with your target
percentage points. By concretely measuring group
whether they were reaching their target

Analysis
OR

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claim that it was positively affecting the
poor.
+ you can use other indicators/

Impact
existing data sets

Impact
Especially if you are operating a program
or selling a product where you don’t have o For example, if the kids you’re

Social
direct control or contact with your users, serving in your program all

Social
you’ll need to develop ways to assess qualify for Free or Reduced
whether you’re actually reaching the ‘right’ Lunch at a U.S public school,

+ACUMEN
people. that indicates that they fall in
your target income levels and
Example: If you were developing the you don’t need to ask them
playground enterprise, you’d need to make again.
sure that you were reaching your target o If you’re working in an
population of low-income neighborhood international context, you
kids at risk for early childhood obesity. Of might use the Progress Out
of Poverty Index which
neighborhood happened to drive through uses proxy indicators—like
and play on the monkey bars, you wouldn’t whether or not houses
turn them away, but if it was only those kids
who ever played on the playground, you estimate poverty levels since
likely couldn’t state that you were achieving reliable income level might
your intended impact because you were not be available.
serving users, but not reaching your target
population.

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PUTTING IT
ALL TOGETHER
Putting It All Together
You’ve know learned how to conceptualize
impact along three dimensions—breadth,
depth, and focus on our target population.
Think of each of these dimensions like lens
of a kaleidoscope, where the full beauty
or clarity of your impact only becomes
apparent if you put all three together.
We’ve found that this model is particularly
enterprise holding discussions about your
impact with donors or funders. If you can
articular your social impact using a model
that emphasizes your depth, breadth, and
particularly constructive.
If you only consider one of these dimensions,
you’re getting only a partial—and potentially
if you only focus on breadth of users, you
might not be considering whether you are
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reaching your ideal target population. If you
focus only on depth, you may be radically
changing people’s lives, but if it is only 5
families, you may not be achieving the
necessary scale or breadth of impact that
you set out to create.
Analysis
In the Workshop for this module, you’ll
Analysis
work on crafting your own Impact Model—
where you set out your ambitions for what
Impact
you want your organization to achieve in
Impact
each of these dimensions. Then, in the next
module, we’ll help you pull them together
Social
into a theory of change or story of exactly
Social
what you’ll need to put in in and what will
need to “come out” in order to achieve these
+ACUMEN
impact goals. Finally, if you’re focused on
exactly how you’ll measure the breadth,
depth, and focus on your target population—
Module 4.
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