Measuring impact - who counts?
Participatory evaluation
1 December 2007
Alliance magazine
I evaluate the programmes of organizations that are committed to social change: innovation, modifying systems, transforming structures and relationships of power – no less! They want to understand the impact of their activities, but accept that the time lag between action and effect, and the extreme difficulty of attribution, make it almost impossible to measure enduring, sustained changes in the lives of people or the state of the environment. We therefore evaluate the results that are upstream from impact – outcomes.
