Measuring Impact
What We Track and How We Verify It
This document explains how Amply approaches impact measurement—what we track, how we verify it, and what donors can expect to see.
The Challenge of Measuring Impact
Measuring charitable impact is hard. Unlike business metrics (revenue, profit), social impact often involves:
- Long time horizons: Education today shows results in decades
- Attribution complexity: Did this intervention cause the change, or something else?
- Qualitative outcomes: How do you measure "improved quality of life"?
- Resource constraints: Rigorous evaluation is expensive
We don't pretend to have solved these challenges. But we believe imperfect measurement is better than no measurement.
What Amply Tracks
Outputs vs. Outcomes
Outputs are activities completed:
- 1,000 meals served
- 50 wells built
- 200 students enrolled
Outcomes are changes achieved:
- Reduction in hunger rates
- Decrease in waterborne illness
- Improved literacy scores
Amply encourages organizations to report both, but outcomes matter more for understanding effectiveness.
Standardized Metrics
Where possible, we standardize metrics within SDG categories so organizations can be compared:
| SDG Focus | Standardized Metrics |
|---|---|
| Hunger (SDG 2) | Cost per meal, people fed per month, nutrition outcomes |
| Education (SDG 4) | Cost per student, completion rates, learning assessments |
| Health (SDG 3) | Cost per treatment, lives saved/improved, health outcomes |
| Water (SDG 6) | Cost per person served, water quality metrics, usage rates |
Cost-Effectiveness
A key effectiveness metric: how much impact per dollar?
- Cost per life saved
- Cost per student educated
- Cost per ton of CO₂ prevented
These ratios help donors compare organizations even when they work at different scales.
How Organizations Report
Self-Reporting
Organizations report their own outcomes through Amply's platform:
- Quarterly or annual outcome reports
- Evidence and documentation uploads
- Narrative explanations of methodology
Verification Levels
Not all impact claims are equally verified:
| Level | Description | Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| Self-reported | Organization's own data, unverified | Basic |
| Documented | Supported by uploaded evidence | Standard |
| Third-party verified | Audited by independent evaluator | Verified |
| Rigorously evaluated | RCT or equivalent methodology | Gold standard |
Amply displays verification levels so donors know how confident to be in impact claims.
What We Don't Do
Amply doesn't independently verify every claim from every organization. We don't have the resources, and doing so would exclude smaller organizations that can't afford formal audits.
Instead, we:
- Require basic documentation for all claims
- Display verification levels transparently
- Highlight organizations with third-party verification
- Surface inconsistencies or red flags in reporting
For Donors
Finding Effective Organizations
- Filter by SDG to find your cause area
- Review impact metrics in organization profiles
- Check verification levels for confidence in claims
- Compare cost-effectiveness within categories
- Read outcome reports for detailed understanding
What to Look For
Signs of an effective organization:
- Clear, measurable outcomes (not just activities)
- Transparent about what works and what doesn't
- Cost-effectiveness data available
- Evidence basis for their approach
- Third-party verification where possible
What to Be Cautious About
- Only output metrics, no outcomes
- Vague claims without numbers
- No cost-effectiveness data
- Resistance to transparency about results
- Overhead ratio as the only "effectiveness" metric
Continuous Improvement
Impact measurement is evolving. Amply is committed to:
- Improving standardized metrics over time
- Making verification more accessible to smaller organizations
- Incorporating new evaluation methodologies
- Learning from the effective giving community
We welcome feedback from organizations, donors, and researchers on how to measure impact better.
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