Social Impact Squared's Approach
Committed to the Highest Standards
Customized to Your Needs and Context
Social Impact Squared projects are guided by the Program Evaluation Standards, the Canadian Evaluation Society’s Guidelines for Ethical Conduct, and the Competencies for Canadian Evaluators.
Although there is a Common Approach to Impact Measurement, there is lots of flexibility in how to carry out the essential practices. Rather than taking a cookie-cutter approach to each project, we customize our approach to best meet your needs, your culture, and the context of your work.
Equity-Focused
Collaborative and Participatory
Social Impact Squared recognizes that systemic barriers, biases, and power imbalances mean that certain groups do not have an equal opportunity to thrive. Our work is committed to exploring how programs and initiatives increase or decrease those inequities and how different groups experience these programs and services differently.
The firm’s name is based in our collaborative approach. We conduct an evaluation with our clients: we combine the knowledge, skills, experiences, and efforts that both we and our clients bring to the table to achieve a greater impact than we could have achieved independently. We encourage our clients to participate in decision-making at all levels of the evaluation process, from deciding what questions to ask to making meaning out of our findings. We recognize that people have their own lived experience and expertise, and evaluations are most likely to produce equitable outcomes when members from the most disadvantaged groups meaningfully lead and participate every step of the way.
Focused on Building Evaluation Culture and Capacity
Balancing Numbers with Clients’ Stories
At Social Impact Squared, our clients do not just learn from a final report — they also develop their own skills and capacities to better assess, measure, and improve their impact on an ongoing basis.
We strive to use the most valid statistical methods to describe the amount of your impact. We then pair those estimates with rich qualitative data that describes why you are or are not achieving your desired impact, and suggest possible ways to improve.
Geared to Simple, Complicated, or Complex Situations
Holistic
At Social Impact Squared, we will tailor our approach to your situation. Whether the link between your actions and outcomes is clear, predictable, consistent, and easy to determine, or you are constantly innovating and adjusting to hard-to-predict developments, we customize our approach to best meet your needs.
We recognize that most programs do not solely affect one outcome, and problems are rarely solved by a single actor or program. Solutions often require many actors working to create mutually dependent outcomes. We use frameworks like the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to make sense of interconnected efforts and outcomes.