Hetal Sheth7/25/22 4:47 AM3 min read

Mentoring Young People into Adulthood with Impact Data

Data-driven nonprofits utilize data to make informed decisions, improve product and service offerings, raise funds, and communicate with stakeholders better. We are seeing a paradigm shift in the social sector, with nonprofits moving to become data-driven organizations. For any organization, this is the time to make the move that would help them achieve their goals.

Mentorship programs for youth have tremendous potential social impact. Helping young people become successful adults has a powerful, radiating effect throughout their lives and communities. It also diminishes the negative social costs associated with imprisonment, crime, drug use, and other negative outcomes. In some communities, young people are at increased risk of such outcomes.

Data-Driven Nonprofit: Boys to Men Tucson

Boys to Men Tucson strengthens communities by training and empowering men to mentor young teenage students into healthy adulthood. Their three-program approach includes site-based mentoring, challenge adventure weekends, and adventure outings. While they can see positive changes in their youth participants and other stakeholders, capturing and measuring those outcomes can be challenging.

The Challenge: How can nonprofits use data?

Boys to Men Tucson was not only seeking to demonstrate their impact but, more importantly, learn how to improve services for their stakeholders and amplify what was working. The organization was facing several challenges in its impact measurement and management (IMM) journey:

Refining their Theory of Change and operationalizing measures
Connecting data from multiple sources
Data collection and reaching stakeholders
Implementing their IMM strategy to get continuous insight
Data-based learning and strategic decision-making

For nonprofits, overcoming these challenges can seem like a daunting task. With the right expertise and technology, effective IMM is possible.

Partnership with SoPact

SoPact has partnered with Boys to Men Tucson (BtMT) to help address all these challenges. Through Impact Cloud®, Boys to Men Tucson created a clear pathway to their impact goals. They defined their outcomes, selected appropriate metrics, designed stakeholder surveys, connected data sources, and viewed everything in real-time dashboards.

Often, organizations understand impact measurement as proof or justification to funders for their programs and services. Impact measurement then becomes more about reporting. However, the real significance of IMM is a continual learning and improvement process. In the end, better programs mean more impactful change in the stakeholders’ life.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Outcomes

One key outcome of BtMT’s impact journey was communicating with and understanding their stakeholders better. They achieved this through an impact experiment. A social impact experiment is a short, time-bound run-through of products or services that allows you to test your Theory of Change.

Boys to Men Tucson broke down its goal of strengthening communities into two parts:

Do young people have the necessary positive role models?
Are we raising healthier, more resilient young people?

Through a stakeholder survey, Boys to Men Tucson received critical information on demographics, mentors, and youth behaviors. For example, they found that most of their youth participants were people of color, while 75% of their mentors were white. They also found a significant gap in Spanish-speaking mentors.

Boys to Men Tucson 2021 Report

This critical information allows boys to Men in Tucson to adjust their programming to better serve the young people they help.

Positive mentorship can be life-changing for young people and their families. As one mother of a middle school participant said, “[Boys to Men ] saved my son from heaven knows what could have happened to him… gangs, drugs, jail or worse.”

The right IMM helps Boys to Men Tucson understand, improve, and amplify their impact. That way, the youth in the programs get the mentorship and support they need to be successful adults.

Data-Driven Nonprofit Diversity

Boys to Men Tucson is changing the lives of young people in Tucson, Arizona. With strong data, they’re learning how to do it better. To build a clear pathway to your impact goals, contact Sopact. You can also learn more about the critical work being done by Boys to Men Tucson here.

Photo: Pexels

Hetal Sheth

The founder of Ektta, and co-founder of SoPact, Hetal holds a deep passion for establishing enduring impact management practices in the social sector to have built-in learning and accountability.