Play 8: Evaluate Your Impact

Checking in on your progress is par for the course when it comes to leading a successful initiative. It’s a step you’ll regularly return to throughout your effort, creating a cycle of continuous improvement. You can use what you learn in this play to measure the progress you’ve made, celebrate what your community has achieved, and identify where course corrections are needed to ensure you accomplish your vision.

Communications Planning Spreadsheet template

Refer to the Communications Planning Spreadsheet template, which includes a tab with a sample framework to track metrics.

TIPS

  • Quantify Metrics: Your metrics paint a picture of the status of your initiative, show progress, and create a sense of accountability. Identify metrics that can be quantified to show the effectiveness of your initiative and community activities.
  • Focus on What You Can Track: Just because you can measure something does not mean you should measure it. Select metrics that matter. Your metrics should link to your activities and tie back to your goals and objectives (short and long term). If selected properly, you can utilize your metrics to track your impact and growth. For instance, you may decide to measure the number of new partnerships you’ve secured and the number of new participants that have joined your community.
  • Capture Information: Expand on the short internal communication plan you created in Play #5, adding key metrics you’ll be tracking and creating a spreadsheet to compare those metrics over time.
  • Review Progress: Regularly check in with your community and others involved in your initiative to review your progress, celebrate successes, and identify activities that may need extra support to move forward.
  • Focus on Continuous Improvement: A successful initiative will require an ongoing commitment and effort to improve. As you monitor progress, identify opportunities to streamline what you’re doing, make tweaks to your process when things aren’t quite right, and stop doing the things that aren’t working.

Guiding Questions to Get You Started:

  1. What are your markers of success?
  2. Which activities are you able to quantify?
  3. Which metrics will help you quantify the progress being made for your activities?
  4. How will you monitor your progress over time?
  5. How will you share progress with your community?
  6. How will you know when you’ve achieved your vision?
  7. Do you plan to sunset your project after completing a certain goal(s)? Or, will it be ongoing for the foreseeable future?
Continue to Play 9: Communicate Your Progress