History

Over the course of two years, nearly 200 nonprofit and philanthropic leaders have participated in designing Charting Impact.  This effort to create a common framework for the charitable community has brought together the best thinking of experts and practitioners across the country.

The initial work for Charting Impact was done by separate advisory groups from Independent Sector and BBB Wise Giving Alliance, both of which were pursuing ways to help organizations be more effective.  Those two initiatives merged in the fall of 2009, at which time GuideStar also joined this collaborative effort. Nine members of the new joint advisory group then participated in two rounds of testing the five questions and other key elements of the Charting Impact framework.  They found answering these questions produced a management tool that helped them communicate more effectively with their stakeholders.

BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar USA and Independent Sector assessed the applicability and value of this framework more thoroughly in the summer of 2010 with a pilot test that involved 39 diverse organizations. Participants responded to the questions using an online interface developed by GuideStar, completed a brief evaluation of their experience, and submitted the names of several stakeholders who provided feedback on the completed Charting Impact Report and the framework of five questions.

The final stage of learning and feedback consisted of 15 “strategy groups” with more than 120 representatives from nonprofits, grantmakers, individual donors, infrastructure organizations, and consultants.  These discussions focused on how to highlight the benefits of Charting Impact to various audiences to facilitate its broad adoption.

As more and more organizations use and comment on Charting Impact, we will continue to refine the resources and benefits of this initiative to reflect the insights of our participants.