A thorough measurement and evaluation framework, tracking actions, outputs, and outcomes as far as necessary, can prompt you to ask important questions about the impact of your actions as you attempt to trace them the whole way through.

Tracking your impact is a vital part of reporting, change making, and movement-building. Many of us have to do it for funding and reporting purposes but it’s also an important additive for the wider field of social impact.

It’s so exciting when our campaigns, projects, or programs have wins—it’s really imperative that we celebrate these—so yes, definitely send out those listserv blasts, scream it from the rooftops, and publish that report! In the excitement of it all, it’s so tempting then to just focus on the positive outcomes and report only those to your team, funders, prospective clients, and networks.

However, it's vital to relay not only the inputs and outcomes that are positive but also the ones that may have had neutral or negative impacts too. Sharing the FULL STORY is necessary for everyone in the movement to learn from as we build upon our collective lessons. If we don’t, we risk the possibility that others may replicate our mistakes and duplicate or compound harms—which is the last thing we want to happen.

As people actively building a movement towards a more just world, we need to prioritize sharing lessons learned from both our successes and our mistakes. While it may be embarrassing to say you thought a certain community would engage with xyz messaging strategy or program that ended up falling flat, it will give others the opportunity to not make those same mistakes, and can instead direct that energy and capacity toward building out better solutions.

Relatedly, we must be sure to share our impact with the participants and communities in which we are working too—not just the people outside supporting the work. Because we know that community members who are most impacted are the ones closest to the solutions, we need to make sure our efforts and resources are supporting and activating their capacity and therefore, supporting our collective vision for a more just and equitable world.