It is no longer enough for not-for-profits to use anecdotal information to show how they are improving people’s lives. With funders looking to achieve greater results from their social investments, not-for-profits have to prove their impact.
We are beginning to measure the impact of our community investment and pro bono programme. With better impact data, we can improve the services that we offer and therefore increase the beneficial impact.
Last year we reported statistics on the ways in which our support has helped community organisations; for instance, through developing new projects or services. The next step is towards a greater understanding of the impact our support actually has on changing people’s lives. This is challenging for a number of reasons. Much of our programme is deliberately focused on holistic support to small community organisations (over 380 globally). Many impact measurement tools, such as “social return on investment” calculations, are long-term, resource-intensive studies, not suitable for many small organisations already operating on strained resources. Furthermore, it is difficult to credibly attribute potential improvements on people’s quality of life to indirect support, such as legal advice to a not-for-profit.
In the current absence of a suitable framework model for measuring the impact of community investment efforts by a law firm, we are making efforts to develop and trial one more suited to our activity. Our challenge is to create a pragmatic but useful model suitable to our programme. There should be value for the sector in sharing the resulting model widely, to stimulate debate and collaboration on impact measurement by law firms and other professional services providers.
Global highlights
- At least 25% of our staff volunteered through our programme in 91% of countries in which we have offices, up from 77% in 2010 and 59% in 2009).
- 70% of our work involves multiple countries or practices
- Over 50% of Forbes 2000 companies have been advised by us over the last four years
| Measure |
FY08 |
FY09 |
FY10 |
FY11 |
|
Hours volunteered |
34,250 |
45,710 |
63,750 |
43,660 |
|
% countries reaching 25% volunteering |
N/A |
59% |
77% |
91% |
|
Organisations supported |
N/A |
331 |
374 |
382 |
| No. of people supported |
N/A |
13,900 |
17,700 |
16,300 |
The statistics above reflect the changed emphasis for our volunteering programme; moving away from quantity towards greater quality and impact. Although we contributed fewer hours this year, the hours we volunteered involved more use of our professional skills. The completion of two large global projects and the completion of short-term secondments also contributed to the reduction. There have been increases in the number of organisations that report that our support has helped them (for instance, a 40% increase in growing the capacity of organisations to deliver services). Although some of this increase will be down to better data capture, we hope that much is indicative of the value of our new approach.
