Eval Cafe: Demonstrating Value Presentation

Ten years ago, Vancity Community Foundation led a collaborative project to address challenges that community-based organizations face in measuring impact. The project resulted in the Demonstrating Value framework, a simple process, with supporting resources, to help organizations work out how to use information and data more effectively for management, planning and engaging partners, funders and other stakeholders (www.dvtools.org and www.demonstratingvalue.org).

Demonstrating Value supports organizations to consider their data needs holistically in terms of what information can be used to understand organizational sustainability, community impact and organization (business) performance and to consider the explicit uses of information by different stakeholders. It also focuses on the development of a ‘Snapshot’ which can be used strategically to communicate the performance and value of an initiative, program and/or organization (an illustrative example is shown to the right). The process of developing a Snapshot can also highlight areas to strengthen measurement capacity and strategies for doing this.

The talk will highlight recent work with Carleton University’s Centre for Community Innovation to update Demonstrating Value’s resources and to align them with the Common Approach to Impact Measurement. It will also describe our work over the Fall and Winter to work with 10 community based organizations to develop Snapshots and to develop recommendations to strengthen impact measurement capacity.

About the Presenter:
Bryn Sadownik is Consultant, Learning & Evaluation at Vancity Community Foundation. Bryn has 20 years experience working in impact assessment, evaluation and cost-effectiveness analysis. Prior to joining Vancity, Bryn worked as a consultant and researcher at Simon Fraser University, leading numerous projects for government, private sector and non-profit organizations. Bryn holds a B.A. from Carleton University and a Masters of Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University. She is co-author of award winning book ‘The Cost of Climate Policy’ (UBC Press, 2007), and other publications including a chapter in ‘Accounting for Social Value’ (U of T Press, 2013).

Tickets: https://www.meetup.com/Evaluation-Cafe-Ontario/events/276957969/?rv=ea1_v2&_xtd=gatlbWFpbF9jbGlja9oAJGM2NTY4MDg5LTc3NWItNGRhZi1iZDkzLTgzZjNiODBkODQyMg&utm_campaign=event-announce&utm_medium=email&utm_source=promo.