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

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Welcome back to the 2025 Social Impact Trends That Matter Series! 🥳

Meet Ori, the Founder and CEO of Sowen 🤝. He's on a mission to help organizations rethink how they measure their social impact, moving beyond just tracking activities and inputs to truly understanding the outcomes they're driving. 

In this episode, we dive into why we need to rethink impact measurement and how to do it effectively. 📊 Ori shares a framework for aligning measurement to your organization's purpose, combining data and storytelling, and focusing on what matters most - the change you’re creating in the world.

Tune in to hear Ori share his wealth of insights and practical strategies to help you redefine impact measurement in your own organization. 🎧 It’s a must-listen episode. 🙌 


đź’ˇ Learn

  • How to align your measurement to your organization's true purpose and vision for change.
  • How to integrate the “art” and the “science’ in your approach to impact measurement. 
  • Real-world examples of organizations that are innovating in impact measurement and seeing great results. 


Learn more: www.weareforgood.com/episode/601 

Episode Shownotes: https://www.weareforgood.com/episode/601

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/mgpU6iDPqhKIuLmgqtPONrhQvOw?utm_source=copy_url&tab=chat&view=summary


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Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to. We Are For Good's 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. 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 into practice. All right, let's get started. Hey, becky.

Speaker 3:

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?

Speaker 2:

I was going to say you're like poking the bear over here I mean.

Speaker 2:

I love that we're talking this season about redefining impact measurement because, you know, I was scrolling LinkedIn one day and I'd met this mutual connection of Ori, our guest today, but he had written a post that just like pinged 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.

Speaker 2:

And this this year especially, we're double down, talking about systems change, talking about 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. 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.

Speaker 2:

Casual and he's the founder and CEO now of Soin, which is this incredible consultancy focused on the intersection of economic value and utilitarian good. 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. Ori, to have you in our house means the world. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

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?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm kind of the least interesting thing that we should be talking about today.

Speaker 2:

But I'll run through it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because we have a lot to talk about and there's really really interesting important things 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.

Speaker 1:

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 decisions and measure the impact of those decisions, specifically for organizations or initiatives that have a social impact goal to them? 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.

Speaker 3:

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 Ori. 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 you know 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 this systemic change? So I want to talk about this impact measurement. 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.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 1:

Creating direct correlation between cause and effect. We all know, you know 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, 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 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.

Speaker 1:

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 stepped to a different room? 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.

Speaker 1:

With that said, there are some things that 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. 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. Yeah, those are really important measures because they can help you optimize what you're doing. They can 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 like separating between impact and intent. What do I mean by that?

Speaker 1:

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 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 their 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.

Speaker 2:

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 connect it to the why, like that's a huge problem.

Speaker 3:

Oh, 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 I'm really glad you're going into this and keep going, my friend, I know you have two more.

Speaker 1:

No, I think that's the main one right. The results of not being able to connect the vision, mission and 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 nonprofits that we work with have limited resources right? So if I have $1,000 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.

Speaker 1:

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 and the left brain coming together. 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 five or identify new ones?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, gosh, 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.

Speaker 2:

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?

Speaker 1:

So I think a lot of both organizations and individuals and organizations are always a reflection, in some way, shape or form, of individual psychology, right? I think most organizations think of themselves as one or the other, or really leaning towards one side or the other. Right, 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.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you're alliterationist, you're slaying it.

Speaker 1:

But they're not and, in fact, if you are able to bring them together, that's really where magic happens, and this is reflected in so many other aspects of our lives which this is not a political conversation but in so many other aspects of our lives. The polarities right now are so, um, extravagant, yeah.

Speaker 3:

They're everywhere.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 1:

So it's not either an art or a science, it's not either left or the 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, 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 that's their background, right. It's 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 so, so critical and that's really a big part of the art part of how we think about it. I don't know what do you guys think, does that?

Speaker 3:

You're saying things that I have felt and I don't want to just say thought things I've felt were missing in the sector, because I think we double down so hard into the science of it.

Speaker 3:

I feel like we've discussed this many times on the podcast. 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 what the data 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 there are words, the look on their face as we're capturing video, the passion and, honestly, 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.

Speaker 1:

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. Our space is filled with incredible amount of inspiring, phenomenal people who dedicate their lives truly and earnestly dedicate their lives to the well-being of others. That's incredible, especially when you look around our political and social and economic landscape. 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 the science that needs to come together.

Speaker 1:

This is where 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 at Soin called like the do good and the do well. Right, we can't ignore the fact that, like economics are economics right If 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.

Speaker 1:

And if executives in the social impact space and we know this, we know this for a fact. We are just releasing the SoIn2025 State of the Industry study, which I'm happy to share with you we know that there are some 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 just chasing funding all day and putting out fires. So it's important that we're honest about that. 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 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.

Speaker 1:

No, comment even though you baited me there.

Speaker 3:

Sorry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we'll take that out at edit.

Speaker 3:

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 80% of the nonprofit field is organizations that make less than a million dollars a year? Teeny, tiny. What is doable? Where should somebody start?

Speaker 1:

Simplify, simplify, simplify, sim, 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 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. Start with the why Not to quote Simon Sinek and all that stuff. Everybody knows it but 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.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 1:

We really want to understand your stakeholders, because if we don't have a good basis of understanding there, whatever programs, solutions, whatever we come up with, 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 stress test whether what they told you on surveys is actually reflective of what they're 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.

Speaker 1:

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. There's an environment. Your chances of hitting the mark are just not high. And that's where, like 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 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.

Speaker 1:

The body will reject the organ.

Speaker 3:

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 the 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?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I echo that Like the know thyself is like really important here. What I'm wrestling with in my head over here is that we preach the long game. We're talking about these issues that we're all facing trying to solve, for 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.

Speaker 1:

I guess it's pointing in that way. Yeah, that's such a great question, john. I spend a lot of time thinking about time as a concept, right, and it's an interesting one because, you're right, there are issues with time in our industry, in our space, in the social impact space, right, like funders want to see results, we have, especially with foundations that have boards, that mixture of private and public sector people. There's leakage of best practices from the private sector where the private sector thinks in terms of months, quarters at most. That's the cycle of timeframes in the private sector. Yeah, and we want to adopt some of those things.

Speaker 1:

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 timeframes. The work 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 high school graduation rates and you're releasing a program that's going to take two, three, four, five years, maybe even a decade, to really manifest yeah right.

Speaker 1:

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. So to combine the short-term let's say quarterly indicators that tell you are you on the right path. They're not impact 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.

Speaker 1:

Two optimize, yeah, optimize if you're on the right path. Two, 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 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, of course, storytelling to tell your story. Right? That's really, really important. So, again, it's not either, or you need both, you need both, I think.

Speaker 3:

Ori, 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 this, 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 got to know a case study about who is doing this. Well, do you have one that you could share with us?

Speaker 1:

Oh, there's lots of organizations who do this really really well out there and we're proud to work with some of them, but there are tons of this really really well out there and we're proud to work with some of them, but there are tons of other really really strong organizations and thinkers out there, so we're not reinventing the wheel here either. Right, all of this is just a lot of common sense and a lot of simplification. What 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 fondness for them because I spent a lot of time in the UK, living in London, and what they've created in 2022 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 did 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, right. 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.

Speaker 1:

And we saw that this tool that was completely experimental just created such phenomenal results amongst these populations. We saw increases of like 14x in the way in which people felt less isolated, and this is for the general population, for low health literacy population and specifically B, you know, bipoc pop, what they refer to as BIPOC populations in the UK. 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, increased their likelihood and probability of seeing, you know, positive results from this horrible, horrible journey of dealing with prostate cancer which, as we know I mean most people know if it's diagnosed late it's bad. So early detection came into play. So, you know, we helped them pull all this together into a report that is on our website but I'm happy to share with you.

Speaker 3:

We'll drop it in the show notes the impact of this amazing, awesome tool and this.

Speaker 1:

you know I can't disclose the number, but this helped them one go back to their original funders and say, hey, you know we did pretty effective job here and get new funding. 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.

Speaker 2:

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

Speaker 1:

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

Speaker 3:

Right.

Speaker 1:

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 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 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 data and thinking and strategic thinking and putting the design thinking at the center. Just a great example.

Speaker 3:

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 in 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 am just really obsessed with that and thank you for picking such a small organization that is showing this can be done.

Speaker 1:

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 having tough conversations. We had some tough conversations with them, right, but I love that because that helps us transition. Our idea of success is partnership, not vendorship, right.

Speaker 1:

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 really really matter, right, because we're not just, you know, increasing the margins on our 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's success.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I mean, or 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 that includes and how people can grab that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's on our website. We haven't done a big release yet, but you can start grabbing it. We'll be doing like a proper release and podcasts and all that kind of stuff over the next few weeks. But really this stemmed from 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 what are the biggest pain points in our space.

Speaker 1:

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 a really, really useful tool, but they're deeply flawed. 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. 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.

Speaker 1:

We oftentimes assume that innovation and social impact activities only happen in nonprofits. That's not the case of good things, interesting things happening in the private sector and obviously in philanthropy and foundations and nonprofits themselves. But they also happen in academia, they also happen in government. Each one of these 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 want to explore the space between them.

Speaker 1:

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'd love to see it because it would be interesting to look at it. But to the best of my knowledge, first of its kind, it includes exploring 30,000 individuals across all types of organizations, across these sectors, at all levels of the organization, right?

Speaker 1:

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. We're asking across three territories. We focused on UK, canada and US all types of social impact activities and organizations, 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. 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 most relevant to you, dig into those and then maybe take a breath or a coffee or a week off and then dive back in.

Speaker 1:

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, then success. We are going to link this report up in the show notes.

Speaker 3:

And I highly recommend. 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, ori, 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 that can be implemented in this space of measuring impact and rethinking just about the way we connect.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so this one I did prepare for properly because I listened to all of your other episodes. So I have two answers for that. So one is from a personal perspective. For 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. 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.

Speaker 3:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

That's it Right. So that's been evident and I'm so proud of our team.

Speaker 1:

I just talk, they do the actual thinking and working and I'm so proud of our team. They actually make things happen. Our universe work is three things that I hope make us unique. One is the partnership over vendorship. I hate 500-page decks. I've been on the other side of these consultative engagements where you sit in front of people who don't really understand and all they're looking at is the billable hours and things like that.

Speaker 1:

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 get our hands dirty in real, impactful work. So if a project doesn't answer that, we simply will pass and not 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 it's not for everybody and not everybody and for so and so.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is 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 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, 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.

Speaker 3:

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

Speaker 1:

Yeah, life's too short. There are too many opportunities. There are too many good things to do. Sometimes 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 with you to identify five other people who we know which might be a better fit, 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.

Speaker 2:

Wow, I love that data, and you're the only one we allow three one good thing is to come.

Speaker 3:

Oh sorry, three good things, so good.

Speaker 2:

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?

Speaker 1:

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 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, our partners can speak on our behalf. I count a lot on word of mouth. 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? It sounds like they have positive things to say. We'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 3:

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 pull to dive into your data and your impact in a different way? Please reach out to Ori and the team at SoOn. 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. I'm like, oh crap.

Speaker 1:

We got to work on our why as well.

Speaker 1:

No, I think you guys are honestly like. I think you guys are doing incredible work. I think you guys are bringing to the forefront important conversations and doing 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, keep doing what you're doing. It's super important what you're doing.

Speaker 3:

Believers in each other, that's the way it starts. Thank you, my friend, so appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful Thanks for having us.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for being here, friend. Alongside this series, we've created a free 60-minute on-demand workshop and we 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 weareforgoodcom slash trends 2025. Can't wait to see you there. Have a great day.