Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Could anyone have anticipated the impact of the resurrection? Talk about long-term outcomes!

Jesus had a plan in mind, but the disciples seemed surprised and amazed by the early impact of their ministry with him. Feeding more than 5,000 people, dozens of healings, and even one brother raised from the dead. If we’re counting, that’s pretty big impact! No wonder they gained a following.

But the disciples didn’t expect their leader to be crucified. End of project. End of story. Short-term, they failed.

Yet our ministries always have unintended outcomes, whether we see them or not. The resurrection certainly tops the list of unexpected outcomes! (And no, the disciples couldn’t see it, as our scripture lessons remind us this week.) It put into motion a Good News story that’s lasted over 2,000 years with global, eternal impact.

That’s a tough act to follow, yet we do. Or better said, we are part of that ongoing action, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, to make the impact of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection real in our own time and place.

So how do we measure our impact?

I’ve spent the last month thinking about this question. Like many organizations today, especially in the nonprofit sector, our board at ECF wants to know how we’re making a difference. The question is no longer about “what” we do, but “so what?” Impact isn’t about program efficiency, staff, technology or cost – although it involves these elements – it’s about whether our ministry matters in meeting real needs and changing lives.

Do you know your impact? Have you articulated your purpose and measured your results? While we rely on God to clarify and enact our ministries in the world, our congregations are not exempt from contemporary pressure to demonstrate meaningful results. As many wonder how Episcopalians are responding to declining numbers and resources, congregational leaders would be wise to assess their ministries and ask the “so what?” question.

Through working on “impact studies” of five ECF programs over two years, I can recommend at least three key ideas.

Map out your desired impacts and create a plan for measuring them.
Thanks to graduate student interns, we learned about various models for measuring impact. We chose the “Logic Model,” a relatively simple way of listing all the components that go into a program and its desired impact. (We used templates from the UW Extension website to build our model.) The only hard part of the process is intentionality: it really forced us to think through what we were doing and to define our outcomes. To measure results we’ve conducted surveys and interviews or collected statistics and anecdotal feedback.

The Logic Model asks you to define each of the following:

• Situation
• Assumptions
• External influences
• Inputs
• Outputs, both in activity and participants
• Outcomes or Impacts (short-, mid-, and long-term)

Force yourself to think from an “outsider” perspective.
When we began, our default was to describe outcomes according to our internal goals, such as the amount of revenue or clients. Those are important, but not sufficient. We had to turn our attention outward, focusing on the people we serve – what would they say about our impact? For example, we used to measure the number of subscribers to Vestry Papers. I still track those kinds of numbers, but now I want to know what you learned by reading something in Vestry Papers, or what you did differently because of it, or how ECF Vital Practices has helped you lead a more vibrant congregation.

Think about growing impact, not just growing the budget or the organization.
The newest idea I’m wrestling with is “scaling impact.” I was provoked by the statement of a leader at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations who said that growing a budget or an organization is not the same as growing impact. In this day and age, when shrinking financial resources are forcing everyone to consider how much they can do, the question of impact should drive our conversations. What has the greatest impact? How can we do more of it? Can our congregations learn to scale up their impact, whether or not their pledges or parishioners grow? I’m not sure. Certainly impact requires investment ("inputs"). But let’s make sure we are at least asking the right questions – the “so what?” question.