Ask a room of corporate grantmakers what keeps them up at night, and impact measurement is never far from the top of the list. Companies need numbers they can take into the boardroom. Nonprofits need to deliver programs, not paperwork. And somewhere in between, a lot of reports get written that often nobody reads.
So on October 6, we brought corporate and nonprofit leaders together in Toronto for the Community Impact Exchange, the latest stop in the PRISM Network Learning Series, sponsored by YourCause from Blackbaud. A few days later, we took the conversation to a virtual audience from across the country. After an inspirational opening from the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, and a rousing panel discussion on the future of measurement, we rolled up our sleeves in a hands-on workshop led by True Impact.
The message in our workshop came through loud and clear: good enough measurement is not a lowered bar. It's about measurement that matches the size of the decision it informs. Whether you were in the room or not, here’s what you can put to work right away.
Somewhere Between “We Spent $200,000” and a Dissertation
Picture impact reporting on a spectrum. At one end is reporting dollars spent. At the other end is the impractical: an academic study on the results of the program that no nonprofit has the time or budget to produce for every grant.
The sweet spot sits in the middle: “We helped 1,352 people find permanent housing and we know this because our Social Work coordinators track resident files each year.” It’s clear and credible, and it doesn’t bury your partners in paperwork.
Getting there starts with knowing an outcome when you see one. “450 trees planted” is an output; the outcome is carbon reduction. “$2M raised for scholarships” is an input; the outcome is students who graduate. Each one stops a step short of the change we actually care about.
If naming your outcomes feels daunting, start with your mission. You already know why your organization exists and what should be different because of your work. That’s your impact. It doesn’t need to be perfectly worded or fully measurable yet. It just needs to be the change you’re working toward.
Three Honest Ways to Talk About Your Impact
Here’s the part Gabe Cohen from True Impact urged us to take back to our desks: you don’t need a double-blind study to talk credibly about your impact.
Rigour isn’t about collecting every data point you can. It’s about being intentional: choosing what to track, being clear about how you know what you know, and saying “we don’t know yet” when that’s the truth. With that in mind, Gabe shared three honest ways to talk about your results:
- Guess. An educated assumption, based on your experience and what you see day to day. It’s a legitimate starting point for new or innovative programs whose measurement/evaluation is just getting off the ground.
- Estimate. A reasoned approximation, drawn from a sample, a pilot, prior results, or published research from your field. This is especially useful for long-term outcomes and systems-change work, where tracking change directly could take a generation.
- Directly measure. Tracked and verified through your own data. It’s the most rigorous option and also the most costly, so save it for where it matters most.
The closer you get to direct measurement, the more certain your numbers become, and the more they cost to produce. None of the three is wrong. What matters is being transparent about which one you’re using. Informed guesswork is valuable, as long as you label it clearly.
When grantmakers insist on direct measurement, they also decide who gets funded. Organizations with evaluation budgets can meet the bar, while smaller, community-led groups doing equally good work often can’t. It also favours what’s already been proven. New and innovative programs haven’t had time to build a track record, so they can’t produce hard data yet. Accepting a well-labelled guess or reasoned estimate levels the field and leaves room for ideas that haven’t been tested yet.
What does labelling your method look like in practice? Try a sentence like this in your next report: “We estimate that 70 to 80% of participants experienced [outcome], based on a survey of 40 of our 200 participants. We are not yet able to track participants after they finish the program, and we are naming that as a known gap.”
Now compare it with a clean, unexplained 92%. The first tells a funder exactly how much weight the number can bear. The second leaves them wondering where it came from.
Let AI Do the Digging, Not the Writing
Much of the sector is using AI to write. According to research released by Imagine Canada and the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) on the state of AI, 67% of organizations at the time reported using AI for communications and fundraising, while less reported using it for data and evaluation.
Instead of asking AI to write your impact report, ask it to help you find research that lets you estimate outcomes you can’t track yourself. True Impact cited Consensus as a good example of how AI is making academic research more accessible. A youth mentorship program can’t follow its participants for ten years. But published studies of similar programs can help it approximate what those long-term effects might look like. That’s the “estimate” bucket in action.
One caution: AI can surface sources quickly, but a person still needs to read them (every last paragraph), check that they fit the community you serve and assumptions you hold, and cite them properly.
Focus on the Art, Not the Paintbrushes
Caption: Personal Renaissance© 2010 Mural Arts Philadelphia / James Burns. Photo by Steve Weinik
The workshop opened with a photo of a vibrant community mural and a deceptively simple question: what’s the impact of a paintbrush?
On its own, not much. Nobody judges a mural by counting brushes. They judge it by what happens once the paint dries.
The mural in that photo was painted on a methadone clinic in North Philadelphia, part of the Porch Light Program, a collaborative endeavor of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services. It used to be a corner people hurried past with their heads down. Now they stop to chat. Security guards who kept the doors locked prop them open. Music plays. The change runs through the painters too. They walk past a wall that carries their name, stand a little taller, call themselves artists, and sign up for the next project.
No single brush did that, but none of it happens without them.
There’s data here too. A study by Maya Moritz found that daytime crime dropped 42% on average around new Philadelphia murals, and the effect held for up to seven years. That’s the kind of number a boardroom loves. But it can’t tell you why a young artist is proud or why the doors are open again. You need both: no data without stories, no stories without data.
Funders, this one’s for you. Your grant is a paintbrush. If you ask a nonprofit to report only on the sliver of the program your dollars paid for, you get a thin, awkward number, and your partner gets one more custom report to write. Instead, ask for the whole story of the program, the numbers and the people, then be honest about your fair share of it. That’s a great example of trust-based philanthropy in practice: your partner tells the story once, in their own words, and you amplify that story.
Your ‘Good Enough’ Toolkit
Everything above comes together in our new guide, Measuring Corporate Social Impact: Recommendations for Better Partnerships and Reporting. Originally developed by ACCP and True Impact in the US, we’ve worked with them to adapt it for Canadian companies as a companion to the PRISM Practices. It walks corporate partners through four steps:
- Determine and track your philanthropic priorities
- Set practical reporting requirements
- Claim your impact, no more and no less
- Improve your investment with data
Along the way, you’ll find a recommended set of reporting sections for your nonprofit partners, sample contract language, and guidance on contribution claims. There are also notes on reconciliation and Indigenous data sovereignty that are important to reflect on.
Download Measuring Corporate Social Impact here.
Where We Go From Here
If one thread ran through the whole afternoon, it was that measurement works best when funders and nonprofits figure it out together. That’s what made this gathering stand out. Corporate and nonprofit leaders sat at the same tables, talked openly about what they wish the other side understood, and kept bringing the conversation back to the communities they serve.
That’s worth holding onto. Good enough measurement isn’t about the report or which framework wins. It’s about trusting your partners, sharing the burden fairly, and understanding what’s actually changing for people.
Thank you to our speakers, our 2026 PRISM Learning Series sponsor YourCause from Blackbaud, our workshop sponsor True Impact, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, and to everyone who joined us in Toronto and online.
Missed the virtual session? Watch the recording here.
The PRISM Network is Canada's leading community of companies committed to reimagining corporate-nonprofit partnerships, contributing close to $1 billion in community investment annually. Learn more about joining the PRISM Network and sign up for the PRISM Viewpoints newsletter to stay up to date with our PRISM Network Learning Series events in 2027.
