Co-design for successful social impact measurement

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Genuine co-design means being willing to compromise, and critically it also takes time given the inclusion of stakeholders and the need to be iterative in designing solutions.

By involving the parties who are delivering and receiving interventions in the evaluation design, we have also found you secure buy-in to the results and subsequent advice around continuous improvement and, where delivery stakeholders are involved in data collection, you also build support for these activities to ensure strong compliance and quality assurance. 

Genuine co-design means being willing to compromise, and critically it also takes time given the inclusion of stakeholders and the need to be iterative in designing solutions.  We were very lucky working with Multicultural NSW who demonstrated this authentic commitment from day one – they were determined to include and respect all the voices of the communities being influenced by the COMPACT program.

Our co-design process was born from this commitment to both build a shared sense of ownership of program-wide objectives, across a diverse range of locally-based projects; as well as agree an evaluation approach that could be implemented by the 30+ funded community organisations, who were to assist with data collection.

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We really saw the benefits for our client, Multicultural NSW, for the more than 30 community partners and for the young people of NSW involved in COMPACT as a result of a genuine commitment to including everyone in our approach to measuring the social impact of the program.

The COMPACT impact measurement co-design helped Multicultural NSW build the program in a couple of key ways. By bringing all community partners along on the process, it not only gave them a sense of participation and ownership in the impact measurement process, but also in creating a collective sense of identity for the COMPACT program itself.

In addition, the co-design process also reportedly became an important part of a program of joint activities. The co-design workshops directly contributed to strengthening the COMPACT program by helping to strengthen relationships between partners and build Multicultural NSW’s and partners’ collective evaluation experience.

Ultimately, the evaluation has allowed Multicultural NSW to share evidence of success with community partners; to build the evidence base for this kind of intervention; to build the global reputation of the COMPACT program; and of course with funders to support their successful bid for future funding for the expansion of COMPACT.

The process has really showed Multicultural NSW that the most important thing about evaluation is that program improvement is an iterative learning process, and the co-design process helped facilitate this learning process.