MERL Tech London

Session Summary:
This session is to learn how to manage, and not just measure, impact. Using case studies from India, as well as, with hands on exercises, we aim to teach how organizations can become more data driven, and create data systems that are complementary to programs. The participants will design a system themselves at the end of 1.5 hours for a fictional non profit. 

Session Details:
For development organizations, compiling data often becomes a time-sucking exercise, where the only objective is to report stats to funders. However, data used in the right way can provide development leaders with the much-needed intelligence to course correct programs in real time and achieve their objectives.

This session will use one of SocialCops' case studies to show what've we learned about implementing Impact Management in India and other developing countries. In this case study, we partnered with the Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, one of the biggest philanthropies in India. We worked with two of its field partners and helped them learn how to implement rigorous impact tracking through various methods — design-thinking-backed workshops, innovative on-boarding techniques, the creation of simple reports based on their own data, and more. All of these concepts were foreign to the field partners, but the partners now regularly use data in their decision-making process.

The session is intended for monitoring and evaluation practitioners who are looking to create and garner buy-in for better data-driven systems in their organizations. This is be a hands-on session where the participants will first learn about the case study and SocialCops' best practices around implementing Impact Management, then participants will evaluate a fictional nonprofit organization to assess what they are doing wrong. The session will also share larger case practices around designing data systems around people rather than reports, followed by an open Q&A.