Our services

Measuring social impact and program evaluation

Forget the 5 star review - what difference are you REALLY making?
  • Can you measure the real benefits of your work, beyond just counting numbers?

  • What difference are you making for the people you support, aka social value?

  • Do you have evidence of the value that you add for your clients, investors, community and the environment?
  • Impact measurement and program evaluation will:

  • Provide evidence for grant applications and discussions with investors about the difference you're making, and why they should give you funding.

  • Save time and money by making informed decisions about where to focus your resources, based on where you’re making the most difference.

  • Motivate your team by showing them how their hard work is achieving your mission, and making a real difference for people and/or planet.
  • We'll help you:
  • Gather evidence to show the impact of your work - starting with your 'theory of change' or program logic.
  • Put a dollar value on hard-to-measure benefits created by your work.
  • Collect the right feedback from clients and community to demonstrate your value-add and give you ideas to improve or expand.
  • Get your team on board so everyone understands why we measure impact.
  • Create easy ways to measure your impact as part of everyday work.
  • Capture lessons learned - What have we achieved? What was challenging? What have we learned? What should we keep doing or change?
  • Communicate results to the people who need to know.
  • Principal Consultant Renée Madsen is fully trained and experienced in calculating social value. Renée has over 20 years experience evaluating programs of all sizes across diverse fields. Scroll down to read about Renée's experience.
Measure the real impact your work is having for the people you want to support. Photo credit: CatholicCare Toowoomba

Training in program evaluation and measuring impact

We upskill not-for-profits, businesses, individuals and anyone else with an interest in theory, tools and techniques for measuring impact. We make it relevant to your work and easy to understand.
We offer one-on-one mentoring and group workshops. Contact us to find out more about tailoring evaluation training to your field of work and your requirements.
Visual and practical evaluation training for staff at Independent Schools Queensland. Photo credit: Josephine Wise
We engaged Renée to develop an evaluation framework for our Teaching & Learning suite of professional development programs. Renée helped us develop practical tools to measure the impact of our work, and provided us with a strong foundation to think critically about our programs, impact and intended outcomes. Renée also ran evaluation workshops for our team that provided a democratic and collaborative space for staff to build ownership of the evaluation framework.
Michael GilliverAssistant Director, Independent Schools Queensland
"Working through a not-for-profit, I particularly appreciated Renée's ability to scale her involvement with our evaluation processes to match our budget constraints. She has made the evaluation process clear and easy to follow for staff and for stakeholders. Thanks Renee!"
Jayne Thorpe Business Innovation & Development Coordinator, CatholicCare Toowoomba
"Renée worked with Cape York NRM Directors and staff to develop a multi-level evaluation and improvement strategy based on an existing organisation-wide program logic for strategic and business planning. Renée prepared and administered surveys and conducted a series of staff consultation workshops to gather input for the Strategy. Renée was flexible in her approach and timing, prepared meticulously and communicated well with myself and key team members throughout the project. She accommodated the needs of a diverse Board and multi-disciplined staff team and ensured that the workshops were engaging for the participants. I highly recommend Renée to anyone looking to engage her services."
Bob FrazerActing CEO, Cape York NRM
"Renée worked with us to develop a clear and efficient evaluation plan to inform continuous improvement. Renée helped us to identify existing processes that could be used, rather than create additional work. This is working well to embed evaluation throughout our service."
Susan Perry CEO, Community Gro

How to create an impact measurement framework

Read Renée's article on how to measure your success and achievemens beyond just counting numbers.

Why we need local evaluation professionals in regional areas

Read Renée's article about the value of regionally-based evaluation professionals, written for the Australian Evaluation Society.

Case studies

Our Experience

We've contributed our evaluation expertise to dozens of projects and training environments. Here's just a sample:
  • Development of a multi-year monitoring and evaluation framework to support Queensland Government’s $33mil Major Integrated Project, and evaluation support for its successor, the $15mil project Landholders Driving Change.
  • Monitoring and evaluation plan for an $8mil segment of the Australian Government's Reef Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program (RIMReP).
  • Initiation of a ‘data dictionary’ to improve performance information for the Australian Government's $200mil Reef Rescue Programme 2008-13.
  • Impact measurement framework for Independent Schools Queensland to understand the impact of their professional development programs for teachers across the independent schools sector.
  • Organisational evaluation and improvement strategy for Cape York Natural Resource Management.
  • Support a global infrastructure client and large regional council to measure social value created by major community programs via Social Impax.
  • Contribution to a monitoring and evaluation framework for the Burdekin Regional Natural Resource Management Plan.
  • Evaluation frameworks for CatholicCare Toowoomba's community support programs: Which Way, BLESS and TRAMS.
  • Evaluation framework for Community Gro Townsville's Outside School Hours Care service.
  • Evaluation training for project managers and teams in not-for-profit and government organisations.
  • Developing evaluation how-to guides, templates, tips and other resource material.
  • Reviewing performance reports and giving constructive feedback.
  • One-on-one support, advice and mentoring in evaluation.
Let's talk about measuring your impact
Contact us
Sign up for useful articles on topics that interest you
Meeting facilitation, community engagement, strategic planning and others
Choose your topics