Measuring Impact for Online Incubation Programs
Measuring impact is crucial for any organization or business’s success, yet many overlook it. Firstly, it clearly demonstrates ROI to investors. Highlighting your business’s impact opens doors to funding opportunities, a high priority for investors. Additionally, impact data improves communication with stakeholders. While stakeholders may focus less on ROI and more on business progress, impact measurement clarifies this progress.
A robust impact measurement infrastructure signifies a well-organized business. Impact data provides clear insights into every stage of a learner’s journey and its outcomes. Without this data, understanding business performance and its effect on the external ecosystem is challenging.
Impact also helps determine if you are achieving your purpose. Certain aspects of an incubation program or any business are difficult to measure, like achieving your purpose. However, impact data connects your company’s purpose with the results. For instance, in online incubation, it can show how many startups still operate two years post-incubation.
Online as a Channel for Measuring Impact
Online is just a channel. When digitizing your program and measuring impact, find methods that work both online and offline. This applies to impact measurement and program content. Assuming offline methods will work online, and vice versa, is risky. For example, unidirectional teaching might be engaging offline, but online it loses effectiveness. Instead of making virtual masterclasses engaging, rethink your program’s pedagogical model to engage from the start. Learning-by-doing and gamification models, like Duolingo, and real-time feedback tools offer great opportunities for both learning and measuring impact.
Impact Measurement for Online Programs
Virtualizing a program should not affect its theory of change (TOC) if well-defined. The TOC maps what your organization aims to do and how activities achieve that goal. It creates a framework of activities, outputs, and outcomes leading to the goal. This should apply whether the program is online or offline.
You need a mechanism to track startups’ progress after incubation. Digitizing your program enhances monitoring, measurement, and evaluation of outputs and outcomes. For instance, how do you currently measure entrepreneurs’ learning hours or mentors’ dedication? If digital, you can measure everything more effectively, even in blended programs (online + offline). To get better data on jobs, revenue, or investment, link these metrics to participation in your online community.
Virtualization does not create new outputs or outcomes but allows better measurement. Technology simplifies tasks, but design matters most. The learning design should be ‘learn by doing’ and the impact design should follow a theory of change.
An Infrastructure for Impact Measurement Online
At Bridge, we’ve developed our online incubation program’s impact measurement infrastructure over five years. We recommend using the theory of change model. Most programs have two phases (pre-program and program), but a ‘post-program’ phase often takes more time and resources. In the pre-phase, we create a digital profile of the entrepreneur at sign-up, including basic data like gender and nationality. During the program, we track activity through regular checkpoints and our online community, avoiding unknown participant activity.
For the post-program, measure output and outcome as part of the TOC model. Measure output immediately after the program with indicators like the percentage of entrepreneurs who feel the program was critical to their business development or training hours received. Outcome measures what entrepreneurs do post-program, such as business launches or job creation.
To focus on this ‘post’ stage, we set up surveys automatically sent to program graduates every six months for two years. This period allows us to gauge our influence on the entrepreneurs.
A Summary
To summarise, we emphasize the importance of measuring impact both online and offline. At Bridge for Billions, we aim to lead and drive systematic change by increasing access to entrepreneurship. Impact measurement helps us understand if we are achieving this goal. While online channels offer easier and more effective ways to measure impact, the key is recognizing its importance in the first place.
If you’d like to know more about Bridge for Billions, including how you can develop your business or become a Bridge mentor, click here.
Read more about how to measure impact for online incubation programs and why early-stage entrepreneurs need incubation programs.
