601. 2025 Social Impact Trends That Matter: Redefine Impact Measurement. (Ori Carmel)

Summary

We Are For Good Podcast - Episode 601 Summary

Episode Title: 2025 Social Impact Trends That Matter: Redefine Impact Measurement
Host/Author: We Are For Good (Jon McCoy and Becky Endicott)
Guest: Ori Carmel, Founder & CEO of So
Release Date: February 5, 2025

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Introduction

In the 601st episode of the We Are For Good Podcast, hosts Jon McCoy, CFRE, and Becky Endicott, CFRE, delve into the critical topic of redefining impact measurement within the nonprofit sector. Joined by Ori Carmel, the founder and CEO of So, an innovative consultancy at the intersection of economic value and utilitarian good, the discussion explores contemporary challenges and forward-thinking strategies essential for nonprofits aiming to amplify their missions effectively.

1. The Need to Redefine Impact Measurement

The conversation opens with a foundational concern: many organizations lack a clear alignment between their vision, mission, and purpose, leading to a disconnect in strategy implementation and outcome measurement.

Ori Carmel [00:05]:
"A lot of organizations don't have a very clear through line between their vision, mission, and purpose. Why do they exist? What change do they want to see in the world through the strategies that they design?"

2. Common Mistakes in Impact Measurement

Ori identifies two primary pitfalls in current impact measurement practices:

• Measuring Activities Over Impact: Organizations often focus on quantifying activities (e.g., funds raised, emails sent) rather than assessing the actual impact these activities generate.

  Ori Carmel [07:23]:
  "There's a real propensity to measure activities versus impact. How much money have we given? How many emails have we sent? These are important metrics but ultimately they're activities, not impact."

• Separating Impact from Intent: A lack of alignment between an organization's core intent and its impact metrics hinders the ability to tell a cohesive story of influence.

  Ori Carmel [07:45]:
  "When an organization doesn't have a through line between the things that people are doing on the ground and the results of those things, that traces all the way back to the organizational vision, mission, and purpose. It's really, really hard to tell a story of we've been able to manifest the reason for which we exist."

3. Integrating Art and Science in Impact Measurement

Achieving meaningful impact measurement requires a harmonious blend of qualitative (art) and quantitative (science) approaches. Ori emphasizes that understanding stakeholders and incorporating both emotional and data-driven insights is crucial for comprehensive impact assessment.

Ori Carmel [12:32]:
"It's not either an art or a science. It's when you're able to bring the two together and allow them to be complementary and accretive to each other, that's where really, really interesting things happen."

4. Methodologies for Choosing Impact Measurement Approaches

When selecting the right impact measurement methodologies, Ori advises nonprofits to simplify their approach by:

1. Understanding the "Why": Clearly define the organization's vision, mission, and purpose.
2. Mapping Stakeholders: Identify and understand the needs and perspectives of all stakeholders through comprehensive discovery processes.
3. Exploring the Environment: Analyze market pressures, political landscapes, and competitive factors.

Ori Carmel [20:06]:
"Start with understanding and define your true north. Why does your organization exist? What's your vision? What's your mission? What's your purpose? What change do you want to see in the world?"

5. Time Considerations in Measuring Long-Term Impact

Balancing short-term indicators with long-term outcomes is essential, especially for initiatives whose results may take years to materialize. Ori suggests establishing both operational metrics for immediate tracking and strategic metrics for evaluating long-term impact.

Ori Carmel [24:25]:
"If you're looking to understand whether your educational program has helped increase graduation rates, that's going to take years. But having short-term indicators will give you a directional view to know if you're on the right path."

6. Case Study: Prostate Cancer Research in the UK

Ori shares a compelling case study involving a UK-based prostate cancer research organization that developed InfoPool, a tool designed to support patients, caregivers, and families. This tool not only provided crucial information but also significantly improved emotional well-being and decision-making capabilities among its users.

Ori Carmel [28:09]:
"We saw increases of like 14x in the way in which people felt less isolated and up to 18x in their ability to make smarter decisions about their treatment choices."

This initiative demonstrates the profound impact of combining audience-centric design with robust data analysis, enabling the organization to secure increased funding and expand its reach.

7. State of Social Impact Report

Ori introduces So's comprehensive State of Social Impact study, which surveys 30,000 individuals across various sectors—including nonprofits, private sector, academia, and government—in the UK, Canada, and the US. This report aims to identify the most pressing trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the future of social impact work.

Ori Carmel [36:05]:
"We wanted to explore the space between sectors to understand the best ways they operate when they try to work with each other. This study is the first of its kind, providing a holistic view of the biggest trends and challenges in the social impact space."

8. Practical Takeaways

To conclude, Ori offers actionable insights for nonprofits looking to enhance their impact measurement:

• Simplify the Approach: Focus on what truly matters and avoid overcomplicating metrics.
• Integrate Art and Science: Combine emotional intelligence with data-driven strategies.
• Build Strong Partnerships: Prioritize collaborations based on mutual respect and shared goals rather than purely transactional relationships.
• Engage Emotionally: Invest emotionally in your work to drive genuine change and foster meaningful connections.

Ori Carmel [41:15]:
"From an organizational perspective, partnership over vendorship, genuine care about your work, and ensuring you don't work with individuals who don't align with your values are key to success."

Conclusion

Episode 601 of the We Are For Good Podcast provides a deep dive into the evolving landscape of impact measurement in the nonprofit sector. Through insightful discussions with Ori Carmel, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the importance of aligning organizational purpose with strategic actions and the necessity of integrating both qualitative and quantitative approaches to truly measure and enhance social impact.

For those interested in exploring these concepts further, So's State of Social Impact report is available on their website, offering valuable data and analysis to inform and inspire nonprofit leaders and change-makers.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ori Carmel [00:05]:
  "A lot of organizations don't have a very clear through line between their vision, mission, and purpose."

• Ori Carmel [07:23]:
  "There's a real propensity to measure activities versus impact."

• Ori Carmel [12:32]:
  "It's when you're able to bring the two together and allow them to be complementary and accretive to each other, that's where really, really interesting things happen."

• Ori Carmel [20:06]:
  "Start with understanding and define your true north."

• Ori Carmel [24:25]:
  "Having short-term indicators will give you a directional view to know if you're on the right path."

• Ori Carmel [28:09]:
  "We saw increases of like 14x in the way in which people felt less isolated."

• Ori Carmel [36:05]:
  "This study is the first of its kind, providing a holistic view of the biggest trends and challenges in the social impact space."

• Ori Carmel [41:15]:
  "Partnership over vendorship, genuine care about your work, and ensuring you don't work with individuals who don't align with your values are key to success."

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Further Resources:

• State of Social Impact Report: Available on weareforgood.com
• Connect with So: Reach out via email or through their website for partnerships and consultations.

Transcript

[Orey]

A lot of organizations don't have a very clear through line between their vision, mission, and purpose. Why do they exist? What change do they want to see in the world through the strategies that they design? The implementation of those strategies through activities, and then the measurement of the output of those activities through metrics. Meaning there's a disconnect.

[John]

Welcome to We Are for Good Social Impact Trends that matter in 2025. In partnership with our friends at Idonate, we have hundreds of conversations each year, both on the podcast and offline with incredible change makers around the world. In this limited series, we're lifting the eight trends that have cut through to us over the past year. These ideas and shifts hold the power to transform your mission from the inside out. And so in these eight episodes, we're breaking down the trends one at a time and inviting a subject matter expert in to take us deeper and to put it in pract. All right, let's get started. Hey, Becky.

[Becky]

Hey, John. And welcome to everyone out there listening. And welcome back to the Trends that Matter series. Today, we're lifting the trend redefine impact measurement. And this really gets us all riled up and gets us going, doesn't it?

[John]

John, I was going to say you're like poking the bear over here. I mean, I love that we're talking this season about redefining impact measurement because, you know, I was scrolling LinkedIn, LinkedIn one day and I had met this mutual connection of Orey, our guest today, but he had written a post that just, like, pained me. Like, I remember feeling in my chest, like, man, this really matters. And he was, he was talking about that we need to talk about impact differently. Like, how much in our entire careers do we talk about so many millions of dollars raised and we all, like, celebrate and then we move on to the next thing in life and then we forget, like, what did the money even do? Like, did it even attach to the outcomes that we're really trying to chase in this world? And I thought so much of our life, talking about impact comes back to things that are really not moving the needle. And this, this year especially, we're double down, talking about systems change, talking about the really taking care of the root of these issues. It's like, we've got to get Corey in the chair. And then I meet this guy, and he is the most human epic. Hi. Yeah. Just. He calls himself a pragmatic idealist, which is so much our people, right? But for more than 20 years, he was driven by building, solving, and collaborating. He saw the world through the lens of multiple industries and organizations, including government, academia, nonprofits, and companies large and small. I mean, a few that we would probably know, like, hello, American Express and Twitter before it was renamed Casual. And he's the founder and CEO now of so in which is this incredible consultancy focused on the intersection of economic value and utilitarian good. And they're working with some of the most incredible nonprofits to help them dial in the story to understand what is impact and how can we actually move the needle. Orey, to have you in our house means the world. Welcome to the podcast.

[Orey]

Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super, super excited. We've been waiting for this for a long time. This is fantastic. Thank you for the opportunity.

[John]

So, I mean, this is your first time on the show, so we got to give our listeners a little bit of your background. I've shared a little bit of your highlights, but I mean, take us into what led you. What are some formative experiences that led you into this work that you're doing today?

[Orey]

Yeah, I'm kind of the least interesting thing that we should be talking about today, but. But I'll run through it.

[Becky]

Yeah.

[Orey]

Because we have a lot to talk about, and there's really, really interesting, important happening in kind of our space around impact measurement. And that's really the important stuff. Right. But as far as I'm concerned, or me, my background is in decision science and game theory and economics with a little bit of analytics, which just means I can call BS in multiple languages. And as you said, I worked in multiple environments. Yeah. Like, I've worked in government, across government and academia and private sector and public sector. So I've kind of seen our universe of social impact from multiple different angles, which is great. But really what I'm most interested today is how does data play? What role can data and technology play in the way in which we design, implement, make decision to measure the impact of those decisions specifically for organizations or initiatives that have a social impact goal to them. Like, that's what we've been focused on for the past five, six years, and that's where we spend the most of our time.

[Becky]

I mean, can we all get a shout out for what I would say is one of the most likable people we've had on the podcast? Because you truly are Orey. But I think we're diving into data and social impact measurement today. And we say data. I'm from Oklahoma. You got the data up on your Connecticut side. But we talk so often about. We only Measure. We're only measuring one thing in this entire sector. There is so much going on beneath the iceberg. Measuring what someone is giving is giving you such a small percentage of the story of what's actually happening within your organization. And I think that there is just not this propensity that we've ever been taught or educated how to interpret data, how to look more broadly at it, how do we set outcomes in a way that actually does move the needle toward, you know, this systemic change. So I want to talk about this impact measurement.

[Orey]

Yeah.

[Becky]

What are we getting wrong? I want to know what are people getting wrong about it? And what are the opportunities that we need to be seizing?

[Orey]

Yeah. So before we let our critical analytical self jump into play, which I am, by the way, a critical analytical type. Yeah, I am. Self awareness. Right. For better or worse, I do think we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace. Right. Like measurement of impact and attribution is not easy. Right. Like life is complicated. And because of that, you know, creating direct correlation between cause and effect, we all know that, you know, the easy and everybody knows, like correlation to non equal causation and all that kind of stuff. Measurement of impact is not always easy. Right. Like I'll give you the classic example which we call the aspirin test. Right. Like you wake up in the morning, you have a headache, you take an aspirin or paracetamol or Tylenol or whatever. We're not sponsored by any of those brands.

[Becky]

Yes.

[Orey]

And then an hour later you don't have a headache. Right. Most chances are that that pill that you took, the paracetamol in, it acted and your headache is gone. But can you really attribute it to 100% to that? Could it be that maybe you had a glass of water, could it be that you went for a walk? Could it be that you have a carbon monoxide poisoning in your house and you just step a different room? Like all those things are possibilities. They're not very likely, but they're possibilities. So the universe of possibilities in our very, very complex worlds is immense. Right. And not everything that we can measure should be measured. Not everything that we measure is actually meaningful. So I do think that it's important to give ourselves a little bit of grace. With that said.

[John]

Yeah, we'll take it.

[Orey]

Yep. Yeah. There are some things that, that we can, we can do better. And I think three or four things come to mind for me in the way that we see them. With most of the private, public, philanthropic, academic organizations that we work with, the first one, there's a real propensity to measure activities versus impact. And I think that's where, you know, what you mentioned earlier, how much money have we given? How many emails have we sent? How many people showed up to our gathering, how many meetings have we had? You know, those types of things. Those are important stuff. Yeah, those are really important measures because they can help you optimize what you're doing. They can help you. They can help tell you whether the investment that you're making, financial investment, time, et cetera, et cetera, are reaping benefits. But ultimately they're not impact, they're activities. Right. And most organizations are really bad at separating between activity metrics and impact metrics. And you need both, but both have different uses. So that's the first thing that I think we can do a little bit better in. The second thing is separating between impact and intent. What do I mean by that? A lot of organizations don't have a very clear through line between their vision, mission and purpose. Why do they exist? What change do they want to see in the world through the strategies that they design, the implementation of those strategies through activities, and then the measurement of the output of those activities through metrics. Meaning there's a disconnect somewhere along this path. There's a disconnect. And when an organization doesn't have a through line between the things that people are doing on the ground and the results of those things, that traces all the way back to the organizational vision, mission and purpose. It's really, really hard to connect the two. Makes it really hard to tell a story of we've been able to manifest the reason for which we exist.

[John]

And I mean, you think about just like basic leadership principles too, of like the importance of explaining and connecting the why behind why we would do anything. You know, it kind of gets us all excited to like, why I need to Send out the 42 second email or whatever is on my task list today. So it's like, if we can't connected to the why, like that's a huge problem.

[Becky]

I think we struggle with this so mightily. I will say I struggled with it. The definition of it. And I was a communications director at a couple of missions and so I'm really glad you're going into this and. Keep going, my friend. I know you have two more.

[Orey]

No, that. I think that's. I think that's the main one. Right. Like the results of not being able to connect the vision, mission, purpose in a cognitive flow through to the activities that you're doing. Or the projects that you choose to take on to how those projects get implemented and then what are the results? Really hinders organizations ability to do a bunch of really, really important things. First one is obviously to allocate resources, right? Are we allocating our resources? And most of the non profits that we work with have limited resources, right? So if I have a thousand dollars to spend on this particular thing, is this really serving the goal and the purpose of the organization? Or are we doing this because we've always done it, because it's easy to do, because it's kind of the most obvious thing that we have in front of us? So like the whole optimization thing really falls apart if you're not able to connect that through line and then you've got the resource allocation, then the optimization. You can't optimize what you're doing. You can't really land on whether the things that you are doing are actually reaping the results that you wanted to see. And then the third one, which is really critical for a lot of nonprofits, especially medium and smaller size nonprofits, is the ability to raise funding. They can't demonstrate their impact in a meaningful way that creates. And we'll talk about this later, like the right brain, the left brain coming together, right? You need the emotive and the factual. They can't do that because they can't demonstrate impact. And that makes it really hard for them to go back to their existing funders and say, yeah, you gave us X amount of dollars two years ago. Here's what we were able to do with it. Can you give us x times 5 or identify new ones? Yeah, gosh.

[John]

I mean, in our journey too, like we saw the difference of when impact was shown to somebody that invested. Like we would say they even toggled over to becoming a believer from just like a transactional donor. Like it like something shifted in their head because they've seen that connection. So it's like so imperative that we make that kind of close the loop of like what's happening. So I want to go there on the art and science that you're kind of alluding to, right. That there's, there's really a systematic approach because impact measurement does call for both sides of this. How do you walk through both the art and the science when you think about impact measurement?

[Orey]

So I think a lot of both organizations and individuals and. Right. Organizations are always a reflection in some way, shape or form of individual psychology. I think most organizations think of themselves as one or the other or really leaning towards One side or the other. They think of it as a spectrum. You mentioned earlier, we like to think of ourselves as pragmatic idealists and system thinkers. Right. Like I'm really big on systems thinking and game theory because those concepts bring together things that may in our day to day seem disparate and disconnected or even dichotomous. Disparate, disconnected, dichotomous. I like that. But, but they're not. And in fact, like if you are able to bring them together, that's really where magic happens. Right. Like, and this is reflected in so many other aspects of our lives which will not. This is not a political conversation, but like in so many other aspects of our lives. The polarities right now are so extreme.

[Becky]

Yes. They're everywhere.

[Orey]

Yeah. And really most of the time in most aspects of life, like the real stuff happens in the in between. Right. And I think it's the same here. So it's not either an art or a science. It's not either left or in a right brain. It's not either emotions or data. It's really when you're able to bring the two together and allow them to be complementary and accretive to each other, that's where really, really interesting things happen. So to us, like the art part is where there are people in our organization that are generally better as people than I am and smarter and more talented than I am. But really they're really, really. That's their background. Right. Is audience centricity and understanding environments and understanding people and understanding communities and really digging into what those entities, individual or groups, want and need and what are their day to day challenges and how do we truly understand that? Through active listening and asking questions and combining quantitative and qualitative research and evidence based to bring that all together to truly understand our stakeholders. The stakeholder understanding and audience centric approach. Audience centric design is also critical and that's really a big part of the art part agree of, of how we think about it. I don't know, what do you guys think does that?

[Becky]

I, I just. You're saying things that I have felt and, and I don't want us to just say thought things I felt were missing in the sector because I think we double down so hard into the science of it. I feel like we've discussed this many times on the, on the podcast. Here's the, here's the structure, here's the playbook, here's the data points to get and here's the playbook. And it's like it's missing the human Quality of needs to be. And that is in the art. And you said something earlier that I want, I want to lift. You talked about how impact will manifest from these things. And I think the experience of that we're trying to create for people is something that brings that art in. Because their words, the look on their face as we're capturing video, the passion and honestly like the blunt feedback. And if we're only measuring what they're giving, that is telling such a short story. So I believe deeply you even mentioned this about yourself. The emotional intelligence that we can bring to not just the relationships we're building, but how we're reporting out on what's actually happening beneath the iceberg is absolutely critical.

[Orey]

Yeah, I agree, I agree. But that's only half of it, right? And I think one thing that we need to be honest about ourselves if we look earnestly at the social impact space, is that we haven't done a great job of bringing together the other part of it. Like our space is filled with incredible amount of inspiring, phenomenal, phenomenal people, right. Who dedicate their lives, truly and earnestly dedicate their lives to the well being of others. Like, that's incredible. Especially when you look around our political and social and economic landscape. Right? However intent and you know, ethos can only take us so far if we cannot start integrating systematic solutions. And this is where the science part, right. Like you were talking John earlier about the art and I was saying the art and the science need to come together. This is where we are. We have not done great, right? Is understanding that to build systematic solutions that can scale. Right. And operate in really, really complex environments like our world, you need to have some rigor and you need to have systematic thinking and you need to be able to create solutions that bring together what we had. So and called like the do good action and the do well, right? We can't ignore the fact that like economics are economics, right? If a social, a social, you know, a social impact organization or a nonprofit can have the best people and the best purpose, but if it can't keep the lights on, it's not going to make an impact. Right? And if executives in the social impact space, and we know this, we know this for a fact, we are just releasing those. So in 2025 State of the Industry study, which I'm happy to share with you, we know that 75, there are parts of our industry where 75% of leaders spend 75% of their time in completely reactive transactional modes. They're not doing any strategy. They're not. They're just chasing funding. Yeah. All day and putting out fires. Right. So it's important that we're honest about that. Right. We haven't done a great job of implementing best practices and methodologies and approaches that the private sector has figured out a long time ago. And we can take those things and use them to amplify the things that we're doing that are more than that are about more than, I don't know, an extra 5,000 users on Mark Zuckerberg's, you know, monthly average user list or something like that.

[Becky]

No comment. Even though you baited me there.

[Orey]

Sorry. Yeah, we'll take that out at Edit.

[Becky]

No way. Keep it in. I do want to have you walk us through how we can choose the right impact measurement methodology for our works. What do you recommend to people knowing specifically that they're the 80% of the non profit field is organizations that make less than a million dollars a year. Teeny tiny. What is doable? Where should somebody start?

[Orey]

Simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify. And as much as possible, look, every organization is going to land on a different approach and a different strategy for themselves. And that's great, that's, that's really good. But there are some things that we see in common for most organizations. I think a great starting point is what you mentioned earlier, Becky. Like start with the why, you know, not to quote Simon Sinek and all that stuff, everybody knows it, but like understand and define your true north. Why does your organization exist? What's your vision? What's your mission? What's your purpose? What change do you want to see in the world? That's a great starting point. Right. So a lot of organizations already have that in some way, shape or form. Maybe it needs to be updated. I think the next really good step is that audience centricity component that we talked about earlier. So map your stakeholders. We, with all of the partners that we work with, warn them in advance. We're going to spend a lot more time than you think in discovery. And you might even get frustrated about how much time we spend in discovery because we really want to understand these components. Right? We really want to understand your true north. We really want to understand your stakeholders. Because if we don't have a good basis of understanding there, whatever programs, solutions, you know, whatever we come up with, it's not gonna, it's not likely to be right because it's not anchored in what actually matters in the center of your organization. So understanding your end users, understanding your board, understanding your executives, understanding the People who are executing things on the ground, really mapping all of your stakeholders and asking them questions about what matters to them, what's working and not working, and not just doing it through surveys. Surveys are super important, but deeply flawed. Triangulating that information with other quantitative and qualitative methodologies where you can, you know, stress test whether what they told you on surveys is actually reflective of what they're seeing in reality. So I think that's a really good kind of second step. A third one is obviously explore your environment, right? The market pressures that are working on you, the politics, your competitors, those types of things. Once you have those three things, once you have a really good understanding of who you are, who your stakeholders are and what environment you operate in, you're in a much, much better position to start defining your goals and objectives. That's where the strategy comes into play, right? If you try to start creating your strategy before you fully understand your true north stakeholders and environment, your chances of hitting the mark are just not high. And that's where starting to define your goals and objectives, your activities and resources, your metrics and KPIs and benchmarks, that's where all the more scientific, like detailed work comes into play. Separating between activity metrics and impact metrics, like we talked about earlier, that's where all the, like, more nitty gritty stuff comes out. If you try to inverse that order, which a lot of organizations try and do, you might end up with something that's useful, but your chances are not high. And most of the time, whatever you end up with will not get adopted by the organization. The body will reject the organ.

[Becky]

Ori Carmel, you were invited to my Thanksgiving table. Based on what you just said right there, I think that is such a smart way to rewire our brains. John, did you notice KPIs came at the very very end instead of at very very beginning, which is what we see traditionally. This is a different way to think. I mean, what's coming up for you, John?

[John]

Yeah, I mean, I echo that. Like the know thyself is like really important here. What I'm, what I'm wrestling with in my head over here is that we preach the long game. We're talking about, you know, these issues that we're all facing trying to solve for are, are big. Some are going to take generations to solve for. How do you know you're attuned to the right thing? You know, with such lagging results sometimes, like, how do you shore up, man, this is the right thing to track? Like, it's Pointing in that way.

[Orey]

Yeah, that's such a great question, John. I spent a lot of time thinking about time as a concept. Right. And it's an interesting one because there, you're right, there are issues with time in our industry, in our space and the social impact space. Right. Like funders want to see results. Right. And we have, especially with, you know, foundations that have boards, that kind of mixture of private and public sector people. Like there's leakage of like best practices from the private sector where, you know, the private sector thinks in terms of months, quarters at most. Right. Like that's the cycle, like of time frames in the private sector. And we want to adopt some of those things. Like, I always think that people who say to nonprofits, oh, just act more like a business that's very shallow and derivative. I don't think that's right. There are things that we can learn. But one of the challenges is time frames. You know, the work that we, that social impact organizations often do takes years. So I think that's where as you drill down into your goals, objectives, and then metrics, having a really smart approach to separating between activity metrics and impact metrics, operational metrics and strategic metrics comes into play. Right. So look, if you're looking to understand whether your educational program in the city of Chicago has helped increase graduation, high school graduation rates, that's going to, you know, and you're releasing a program that's going to take two, three, four, five years, maybe even a decade to really fast. Yeah, right. But you would do well if you can understand and you can identify indicators along the way that will tell you whether you're on the right path or not. Right. That will give you directional view. And each program is different. Each program is going to end up with different set of those indicators. But to combine the short term, let's say quarterly indicators that tell you are you on the right path, they're not impacted metrics necessarily, but they will tell you whether you're on the right direction and be able to report on those on a regular and consistent basis and gather that information will put you in a much, much better position to one, know if you're on the right path. Two, optimize. Yeah, optimize if you're not. And three, answer these questions from people who are going to ask you. And those people can be your funders, those people can be the individuals who you're trying to. Whose lives. Individuals and communities whose lives you're trying to change. Right. You want to communicate with them. You want to get Them involved. You want to make them a part of your championship story and to tell. And of course storytelling to tell your story. Right. That's really, really important. So again, it's not either or. You need both. Yeah, you need both. I think.

[Becky]

Orey, we are vibing with you so hardcore. I mean, I wish, I just feel so lucky to the 20 year olds who are listening to who can adopt this right now in your mission. I wish little naive Becky at 22 would have this information because I do think it's game changing in the way that you know yourself, in the way that you can truly use data to inform how you're doing and where you're going and you're doing it together, which feels so much better in concert with each other. So I, I got to know a case study about who is doing this well. Do you have one that you could share with us?

[Orey]

Oh, there's lots of organizations who do this really, really well out there and you know, we're proud to work with some of them, but there are tons of other really, really strong organizations and thinkers out there. So, you know, we're not, we're not reinventing the wheel here either. Right. Like all of this is just a lot of common sense and a lot of simplification. One that does come to mind that I'm really proud of, that our team worked with over the past few months is prostate cancer research. They're actually an organization out of the uk. They're funded and they work with the nhs. I have a special, you know, fondness for them because I spent a lot of time in the UK living in London. And what they've created in 2022 and 20 and launching the market in 2023 is a tool that helps patients, caregivers and their families of individuals who have prostate cancer go through their journey. So it provides them with all kinds of information and insight and support around where can they find different trials and what are the questions that they should be asking? And how can they go through their journey with less regret, less treatment regret? Right. How do they tackle specific audiences and populations that we know have a very high propensity for either having prostate cancer to begin with or getting diagnosed very late because they have what they call low health literacy rights. They're just not aware of these things. Right. So they created this phenomenal tool called InfoPool and they launched it in the market, very experimental. Nobody else has done anything like this. And then a year later they wanted to understand. Now that we've launched this, we have some feedback from End users from caregivers, from clinicians. Does this work? Does this do things like make people feel less lonely, more informed? Does this help them make better, smarter decisions? Does this get them into the right clinical trials? Right. So not just the technical aspects of their dealing with having cancer. Right. But also their emotional aspects of dealing with having cancer. And we saw that this tool that was completely experimental just, you know, created such phenomenal results amongst these populations. We saw increases of like 14x in the way in which people felt less isolated. Like, wow. And this is for the general population, for low, low health literacy population and specifically, you know, bipoc, what they refer to as bipoc populations in the. It was even higher. Right. Like they reported on such phenomenal increases of like 16, 18 x not percent x in their ability to make smarter decisions about their treatment choices. Right. Better health outcomes. So they, you know, had a better experience and you know, increase their likelihood and probability of seeing, you know, positive results from this horrible, horrible journey of dealing with prostate cancer, which as we know, we, I mean most people know if it's diagnosed late, it's, it's bad. So early detection came into play. So, you know, we helped them put all this together into a report that is on our website. But I'm happy to share with you.

[Becky]

We'll drop it in the show.

[Orey]

Notes about the impact of this amazing, awesome tool. And this, you know, I can't disclose the number number, but this helped them one go back to their original funders and say, hey, you know, we did, we did pretty effective job here and get new funding. It more importantly, it opens the door for them to now go to more funders and actually take this tool to the US potentially and start working with partners in the US to get this to another market.

[John]

I mean, it's easy to see the dots of they knew themselves. They knew we were really clear what their North Star was and they knew their stakeholders like they knew each of those pieces. So all of this focus on belonging, are you kidding me? We're like puddles over here that it's like that could be an end result.

[Orey]

Exactly. And so that's all the what we defined earlier as right brain. Right. And it just like gave them an opportunity to like 10x their funding for this project.

[Becky]

Wow.

[Orey]

And right. So now all of a sudden they go from, okay, we got. And I'm just making up the numbers, I can't disclose the actual numbers, but we can go from like having $5 million or pounds against this project to having 50 or 500 or doing a partnership that allows us to actually take this funding to, you know, something that they couldn't imagine a year or two ago. And we're so proud of that work because they're not a huge organization. They do incredible work. They are super, super, super smart. And it's just a perfect example of how audience centricity comes together with, like, data and thinking and strategic thinking and putting the design thinking at the center. Just a great example.

[Becky]

And I just think of the long gameplay of what's being rooted in, in this process. I would imagine, as each of you who are listening right now have probably had a family member, a loved one, you know, go through cancer. And the fact that the avatars are so holistic, it's not just the patient going through it, it's the caregiver. It's the fact that you are building belonging and a community of people who believe so deeply. So not only are you creating the data which is going to give you all of that ammunition to show your funders what could be possible, but you are building this community around your movement who are going to tell everybody about this experience. So I, I am just really obsessed with that. And thank you for picking such a small organization that is showing this can be done.

[Orey]

Yeah, I mean, they're not such a small organization. I would say that they're one of the most impressive partners that we work with in terms of being open to new ideas. And they're so smart and forward thinking and they're open to trying new and different things. They're open to abundance.

[Becky]

Mindset, baby.

[Orey]

Tough conversations. We had some tough conversations with them. Right. Like, but that's. I love that because that, like, helps us transition. Like, our idea of success is partnership, not vendorship. Right. If we can't have an honest, sometimes brutal conversation with our partners where we shout and yell and disagree. Well, we don't actually shout and yell, but disagree and debate and wrestle with really, really rough things that, that really, really matter. Right. Because we're not just, you know, increasing the, you know, margins on our, you know, clicks or whatever. Right. And then still stay true to their purpose and their mission and why we all wake up in the morning like that. Success.

[John]

Wow.

[Orey]

Yeah.

[John]

Okay. I mean, orey, the way y'all show up in the world, your team shows up that you have these experiences and then you spread these ideas. And so I want to give, before we start rounding out this convo, y'all just drop this social impact state of, kind of the state of the state report state of social impact will you kind of tee us up of what, what that includes and how people can grab that.

[Orey]

Yeah, so it's, it's on our website. We haven't done like a big release yet, but you can start grabbing it. We'll, we'll be doing like a proper release and, and podcasts and all that kind of stuff over the next few weeks. But really this stemmed from like conversations that I had at the beginning of 2024 with a bunch of people who are smarter and better than me and more experienced and have been in the space for a long time, of which there are many. And we wanted to understand, like, what are the biggest pain points in our space. And I started researching it and I realized, well, there are a couple of issues. Almost all the material that I could find was survey based, one only survey based, Right. So like I said, surveys are really, really useful tool, but they're deeply flawed. And there was no triangulation of survey information with evidence based, quantitative and qualitative information, any other sources that can help us validate, disprove. So that's one thing. The second thing that we saw was when these surveys and studies were distributed, they only took into account the perspectives and opinions of leaders. Oh, I was like, okay, well that doesn't make sense. Right? Like a leader's perspective on what's happening in an organization, any organization, is going to be very different, right. Than that of the person, the people who are doing things on the ground or doing different things. Right. So there's no holistic view. So that's the second kind of thing that we wanted to fix and then the not fix, but address. And then the third is look at our space holistically. We oftentimes assume that like innovation and social impact activities only happen in nonprofits. That's not the case. There are really innovative, good things, interesting things happening in the private sector and obviously in philanthropy and foundations and, you know, in nonprofits themselves. But they also happen in academia, they also happen in government. Each one of these, like parts of our social impact universe has its own pressures that it needs to deal with its own set of ideas, its own limitations, barriers and opportunities. And I think one of the interesting things is that we talk a lot about collaboration in our space, but we don't really understand what are the best ways in which these, let's call them, sectors within our space operate when they try to work with each other. So we want to explore that. Right? We wanted to explore the space between them. So we launched this massive study that aims to do exactly that. I Don't know if it's. I think it's a first of its kind study. It's the first that I could find of its kind. So if anybody finds something similar, by all means, I would love to see it because it would be interesting to look at it. But to the best of my knowledge, first of its kind, we, you know, it includes, you know, exploring 30,000 individuals across all types of organizations, across these sectors, at all levels of the organization. Right. So we're not just asking executives, we're also asking their board, but we're also asking the people who are executing things on the ground. Like individual contributors and team leaders were asking across three territories. We focused on uk, Canada and us, all types of social impact activities and organizations. So it doesn't just. And we wanted to get as holistic of a view as we possibly could on what are the biggest trends, things that worry us, opportunities ahead of us. And we landed on 10, you know, we aggregated them in a really, really interesting study. It's big, it's heavy, it's not meant to be consumed in one go. It's meant to identify the two or three things that are element to you dig into those and then maybe take a breath or a coffee or a week off and then dive back in. But I think it represents a really interesting view of what are the things that we should be aware of, thinking about as we design and implement our strategies in the social impact space moving forward. So we're quite proud of it and if other people find it even a little bit interesting that we've been able to add to the collective set of knowledge and discussion about these things than success.

[Becky]

We are going to link this report up in the show notes and I highly recommend specifically like anyone who's interested in this or thinking about how to reshape the story, the picture that you are trying to convey about your mission, please go check it out. I mean there's literally a CliffsNotes version. I hate to say this because I want everybody to read it, but there is an executive summary. You can get the high level points because this is data we need to know. So Orey, you've listened to the podcast. You know how we round out our conversations. We're going to need a one good thing for you. Bring us home with something, you know, that can be implemented in this space of measuring impact and rethinking just about the way we connect.

[Orey]

Yeah. So this one I did prepare for properly because I listened to all your other episodes. So I have two answers for that. So one Is from a personal perspective from me. I think what makes our universe work really, really well is our leadership team is very careful about surrounding itself with people, especially me. I'm very careful about surrounding myself with people who are better than me. And then my job is to enable them and get the hell out of their way. Yep, that's it. Right? So that's been evident. And I'm so proud of our team. I just talk, they do the actual thinking and working and I'm so proud of our team. They actually make things happen. But then from an organizational perspective, I think the thing that makes our universe work is three things that I hope make us unique. One is the partnership over vendorship. I just, I hate 500 page decks. I've been on the other side of these consultative engagements where you sit in front of, you know, people who don't really understand and all they're looking at is the billable hours and things like that. I'm not interested. I'm not interested. And for me, I'm not interested in the 500 page decks that will sit and collect dust. I'm not interested in the blue sky thinking concepts. I want us to, you know, get our hands dirty in real impactful work. So if a project doesn't answer that, we simply will pass and they'll take it. Doesn't mean that somebody else might not be a better partner for you. That's great. It doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do. It's just not for us. We always say so and is not for everybody and not everybody and for so and so. The second thing is we, you know, I think it's really important to really care about your work. Like we get emotionally invested. We do, we just do. We get emotionally invested in, in the goals and the aspirations and the dreams of the people who, the organizations that we work with and in the well being of the people that we work with. Both, you know, the people that the organization tries to help and serve, but the people themselves. So, you know, a lot of times, a lot of people have advised me throughout my career to create more emotional distance. There are situations where that's true, but for us and most of our projects, like being emotionally connected is one of our superpowers. And then the last thing, there's no easy way to say this. We don't work with assholes.

[Becky]

Yeah, good for you. Life's too short.

[Orey]

Yeah, like life's too short. There are too many opportunities, there are too many good things to do. Sometimes you're like, it's just like you're just not a good person and we're not going to spend the time no matter how much you pay us. And sometimes it's also, it's just not jiving. It's just not the right fit. And that's okay. Let us talk, let us, you know, talk with you to identify five other people who we know we might. Which might be a better fit and, and that's cool too. So we're big on that as well. Spend time with people who you actually like. There's a very, very high statistical correlation between projects that are successful and people who like each other. Wow. We take that to heart.

[John]

I love that data. And you're the only one we allow three one good things to come.

[Orey]

Oh, sorry.

[Becky]

Three good things. So good.

[John]

Yeah, Lori, I mean, I want to connect everybody listening today to your team, to your incredible work. Where's the places y'all hang out online? I've Already referenced your LinkedIn, but where's the best place to reach out to your team and learn more?

[Orey]

Yeah, just reach out to us via email. You can reach out to us via our website. You know, we're on a ton of social media things and events and you know, we're not. We don't have a huge marketing machine behind us. We try to stay focused on the work and we're relatively new in the space, but hopefully the fact that we do good work, that our partners can speak on our behalf, you know, I count a lot on word of mouth, right? Like if we do good work, good things will happen. So find us through your other partners. Find us through other thought leaders in this space. Ask them if we do good work, what do they think about us and if sounds like they have positive things to say. We'd love to hear from you.

[Becky]

I mean, I'll tell you the moment that I fell in love with someone and it was just this phrase that was on your website. I want to read it to people. It says, humility, expertise and a relentless focus on impact results comes together through a diverse team of global leaders that bridge empathy and thoughtfulness with a no BS approach. Have you ever heard a consultancy speak that way? I mean, you already had me at don't work with assholes because I do agree with that. But that was so beautiful and I just, I really encourage people. If this story is resonating with you, are you feeling the poll to dive into your data and your impact in a different way? Please reach out to Ori and the team at so on. You will not find a group of kinder, more brilliant human beings. So thank you for coming in. Thank you for teaching. It's actually humbled us a little bit and probably. I don't know about you John, but we need to be measuring some different stuff. We gotta work on our why as well. So.

[Orey]

No, I think you guys are, I honestly like, I think you guys are doing incredible work. I think you guys are bringing to the forefront important conversations and doing it it with humility and humor and kindness and intelligence. I have the utmost appreciation for what you do. I enjoyed our engagement from our first conversation, John, which was fantastic. Through everything that we've been through all the way to now, I honestly can't wait to continue to be. I personally and I know the rest of our team can't wait to continue to be a part of your success. So. So keep doing what you're doing. It's super important what you're doing.

[Becky]

Believers in each other. That's the way it starts. Yes. Thank you my friend. So appreciate it.

[John]

Such an honor.

[Orey]

Wonderful. Thanks for having us.

[John]

Thanks for being here, friend. Alongside this series we've created a free 60 minute on demand workshop and we'd love to see you there. Inside you'll get mobilized to put these eight trends from the series into practice at your organization. And of course we would love to have you join us. Head over to weareforgood.com trends2025. Can't wait to see you there. Have a great day.

[Becky]

Every week. We are for Good Podcast listeners, friends and community members reach out to us for both recommendations and introductions to people, products and services to help them take their non profit mission further. And you know what? We love it totally.

[John]

This community is fueled by the support of Value Line partners who've invested in making this community and content accessible for all. And they just happen to be powered by really good humans too.

[Becky]

So we want to give a shout out to We Are for Goods partners, Donor Doc, RKD Group and Virtuous and we hope you'll check them out. We deeply believe in their progressive tech tools and offerings that are truly powering a more generous world.

[John]

So reach out to them directly and if you do mention we are for Good sent you, you'll get that red carpet treatment. Or head over to weareforgood.com refer to learn more or you can even click the link in today's episode description.