How to measure the impacts of your work when investments went to infrastructure enhancements such as new buildings, construction projects, or upgraded systems
At times, funders are contributing to specifically support infrastructure enhancements. In these circumstances, we ask that you create a social impact report covering the program or organization that will ultimately be benefiting from these enhancements and details in the report the overall impact on end beneficiaries. The reason for this approach is because your report should represent the end impacts of your work - how lives are improved because of the programs and services you offer.
While this sort of reporting might be more nuanced and deserve a conversation with your funder and/or True Impact point of contact, the following is our general recommended approach for reporting on these sorts of investments.
Overview:
For most infrastructure projects, you can create an organizational or program level report. Regardless of which approach you take, your overview (title, description, logo, etc.) should focus on the programming you offer and not the infrastructure project.
Timeline:
The start and end date of your report should include the timing for the full infrastructure project (e.g. the time to build a new building, install a water system, update a classroom, etc) plus one full program cycle. So if the construction of a new building will take two years, your start date will be the beginning of the project and the end date will include those two years plus one additional year of programming.
Intervention:
Like the overview, your intervention should focus on the actual programming you offer to beneficiaries rather than the infrastructure project itself.
Beneficiaries:
The demographics included in the beneficiaries section are those who are ultimately impacted by your program. So if you are building a new school, your programming ultimately impacts the lives of students, who are your end beneficiaries.
Logic Model:
True Impact uses a Logic Model framework to showcase the inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts of your programming. You can represent the infrastructure builds in your logic model by adding an indicator in the Program Development stage (likely the indicator “infrastructures developed, enhanced”). Then, the rest of your model should focus on the organization or program’s end beneficiaries and the way they will be impacted upon completion of the infrastructure project.
Budget:
Finally, for the budget section, you should include the costs of the project (infrastructure build) and one full year of programming costs. Ultimately, the budget should align with the dates of your report and represent the cost to reach your end beneficiaries, including the cost for your organization to implement the infrastructure project.
If you’d like to discuss the approach for your specific report further with a True Impact team member, please reach out to your main point of contact! We are happy to explore further with you to help ensure your report feels reflective of your ultimate impacts. If you are new to True Impact and still need support navigating the platform, you can review these mini tutorials for the different sections of the report.