We presented “The joy of claiming and naming value” at the 2022 Canadian CED Network – Manitoba Region‘s annual Gathering. The presentation told the story of wrestling with an organization’s existing data (in this case, qualitative data) and creating a tool to translate that data into quantitative form.
To do so, we developed the measurement tool with the conceptual and methodological help of Maria-Rosario Jackson and Joaquin Herranz Jr.’s 2002 paper, “Culture counts in community: A framework for measurement.”
Their work is grounded in the arts (broadly construed) but their conceptualization of the role and value of arts in society mapped nicely onto the value-based outcomes of the community-economic development organization, who are guided by the Neechi Principles of Community Economic Development. (One of the brainstorms participants engaged in during the session was what other non-monetary economic categories might we want to add to a chart if we could further develop it in a community economic development context.)
In retrospect the session might have been called “The joy of quantification” because it did indeed create joy organizationally: it allowed both staff and board members to see the big picture that was previously obscured by a lot of verbiage!
This allowed for critical self-reflection about priorities and how they were (or weren’t) reaching particular constituents (in this case, grant holders). Prior to the creation of the chart, the organization was stuck giving “examples of” the value of their work, but really had no way to express it in summary form.
What was shocking about the exercise was it revealed that the organization was massively under-reporting its contribution to the low-income neighborhoods they were working in.
The organization previously reported to funders and community stakeholders only the number of job experiences they created annually (the core mission of the organization), but had left out the other direct benefits of their work: providing additional human resources to non-profit organizations and/or neighbourhoods.
Even though work for NPOs and neibhourhoods as an outcome was not the core mission of the organization, the fact is that the NPOs and/or neighbourhoods were a direct beneficiary, and the resulting outcome was substantive. Elsewhere, we conservatively calculated that the monetary value of this work was $53K. Not bad for an organization whose operating budget was in the $400K range!
Moreover, the NPO and neighbourhood contributions the organization was making to the community was deeply aligned with the organization’s core values (the Neechi Principles). I would argue that not counting the social and cultural contributions was, in effect, not counting the organization’s work!
I suspect the organization is not alone. How are third sector organizations supposed to be recognized for the value of their contributions, when we don’t recognize them?
Keep striving,
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