What led you to ImpactLab? Our MoneyTime financial literacy program for 10-14 year olds is provided free of charge into New Zealand schools. We are funded by corporates and organisations who think our work is important. We thought that a GoodMeasure report would help show current and future sponsors the impact our program is having on the young people in our community.

What did the project look like? ImpactLab asked us to provide data on things like program outcomes, levels of engagement, participation numbers and delivery costs. We were already recording most of the information, so it was a relatively straight forward process.

What did you learn? We learned our SROI is $7.70 for every $1.00 spent. This is validation for our sponsors and shareholders that we are being very efficient in creating positive impact for NZ kids. The report also confirmed that our engagement rate is particularly high for an educational resource.

How did the work impact your organisation? As a team we are proud to have it confirmed independently that our work generates a measurable social impact. On an operational level the discussion around what constitutes meaningful engagement motivated us to develop more detailed reporting on each student’s progress.

How have you leveraged your GoodMeasure report? We have shared our report results with teachers, sponsors and the media. The results are particularly important for the social impact managers we are reaching out to for sponsorship. They want to know that if they sponsor us, their funding is going to make a significant difference to the youth of New Zealand.

What led you to ImpactLab? We were looking for support to learn more about our data, understand what it tells us, and evidence the difference we make in a meaningful way. Anecdotally we knew that we were having an impact, and achieving our mission, but we also knew our story was a challenging one to tell. That’s why we wanted ImpactLab to help us share our outcomes, and our impact in an evidence-based way. Additionally, we aimed to use this research to gather more community and funder support, advocate for change and create broader social empathy.

What did the project look like? Ngā Tāngata Microfinance is an independent provider of microfinance services to New Zealanders living on low incomes. Our service is community-based, not-for-profit, and supported by Kiwibank and the New Zealand Government. We offer no-interest, fee-free microloans supported by financial mentoring and debt management. Our Kaupapa is to provide a fair and affordable alternative to high cost and predatory lending, and to support families to address unmanageable debt through financial mentoring and a strong focus on building financial capability. GoodMeasure investigated our loan products, initially measuring them during 2019-2020, as well as remeasuring in 2020-2021. We looked at the journey we take our clients on, from the initial financial mentoring starting point – loan application, approval, and disbursal – mentoring support to improve financial literacy – relief of financial burden – all the way to improved financial stability (and positive impact).

What did you learn? We learnt a lot about our organisational structure, our operating model, clients, and our stakeholder relationships. GoodMeasure fundamentally changed our operations and service delivery.

We knew we had a vital mission and vision, and the recipe we had been operating from had served us well, but we didn’t have the insights we needed for growth and development. GoodMeasure provided those insights – it was not just the result (SROI) that was most useful for our team – it was the deep dive into data, supported by the ImpactLab team, that helped us the most.

How did the work impact your organisation? Three years on, we are a significantly different organisation. Our work with ImpactLab was the cornerstone of our intense period of development. With our GoodMeasure reports, we secured funding to invest in organisational development, which included a full review of our governance structure, improved client-focused marketing and communications, increased loan applications and disbursals, and the introduction of a third loan product. We have also improved our community partnerships and affirmed our positive stakeholder relationships for long-term sustainability.

How have you leveraged your GoodMeasure report? Our GoodMeasure reports have been helpful for us both internally and externally. Internally, the journey helped us to improve our team’s knowledge and understanding of our data and we have used our learnings to improve our systems. Externally, we have used our reports to demonstrate and evidence our impact, tell our story better, and encourage further community and funding support.

What led you to ImpactLab? We heard about ImpactLab from some of our principals, who suggested it would be very good for us as we are very committed to evaluation and improvement. We saw this as a chance to explain what we do and why, supported by some very capable people. Springboard Trust wanted to know about our work through a new lens that added to our own internal evaluations. We work with a wide range of partners, funders, and volunteers. We thought that our GoodMeasure report would help us to connect with these key stakeholders and open up a new dialogue with them about the impact of our work.

What did the project look like? ImpactLab measured our key programmes. They looked closely at who we work with, their reach, and the impact into their communities. In particular, we found the conversations that interrogated our theory of change very useful as we had to explain what we meant by different phrases. This process of definition was very useful for us as a team.

What did you learn? We were very pleased to have affirmation of our work. It has given Springboard Trust another view on what we do, and how our work impacts the lives of others. As we already have a strong array of qualitative evaluation, having a process that looked into the quantitative side was really good for us.

How did the work impact your organisation? The process fuelled a lot of internal review and improvement, as well as some great conversations. We found our GoodMeasure recommendations very useful to explore the data improvements we need to make in the mid-to-long-term. We digested the results and shared them with our core stakeholders, volunteers, and staff – who found GoodMeasure incredibly validating.

How have you leveraged your GoodMeasure report? We are now embarking on a project to improve the baseline data we have, and to explore how we might measure our impact better. In partnership with Hoku Foundation, Springboard Trust will be using the key indicator questions suggested by ImpactLab in our GoodMeasure report to dig deeper into our impact and design ongoing improvements.

What led you to ImpactLab? We knew intuitively that our work was valuable, but we could not easily prove it. We wanted to demonstrate our impact to our community and funders through our SROI, to show that a good return was being generated from their donations and funding.

What did the project look like? ImpactLab analysed our Hospice @ Home service, which is an extended hours in home support for people who need palliative care.

What did you learn? We learnt that beyond supporting the individual needing care, Mary Potter Hospice also helped their family to live well, and improved the wider health system by keeping people out of hospital – creating nearly $4m in social value between January 2020 and December 2020.

How did the work impact your organisation? We had evidence that our investment was worthwhile, and the confidence to cement in our service. We were successfully able to take a case to the Crown for continued and expanded funding contracts for palliative care.

How have you leveraged your GoodMeasure report? Our work with ImpactLab has helped in many ways. We have included our report in grant applications, and because we could illustrate the effectiveness of the programme, we have already raised an additional $25,000 towards our Hospice @ Home service. We also used the metrics from our report to support communications for our 2022 Annual Fundraising Appeal. Community services were the focus of this appeal, highlighting our Hospice @ Home programme.