Programs at Pelastusarmeija : proposed approach for measuring impact
Ebah, Gabriel Verere (2024)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024103027085
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024103027085
Tiivistelmä
As companies, institutions and organisations strive to improve their products and services, it has become more important to have a way to measure different aspects of their activities. One of such is to measure how their product or service makes an impact in the lives of the beneficiaries. Understanding this helps stakeholders in these organisations to finetune products and services.
Pelastusarmeija in Finland is part of the international Salvation Army, which is a well-known international organisation that offers a wide range of high-quality services to people in over 133 countries around the world. In Finland, Pelastusarmeija started serving the local communities more than 134 years ago and has 23 branches called corps (or “osasto”) and outposts. In recent years, thousands of people have been beneficiaries to the different services and programs offered by Pelastusarmeija.
Although data on the different services and programs are available, not much is understood about what impact these activities are making in the lives of the beneficiaries, because current data largely measures only program output. For this reason, there is a need to develop an approach that can help in understanding how people are impacted by these services. This research was meant to help address this need, by first examining existing approaches before proposing an approach suitable for measuring impact of Pelastusarmeija’s programs especially at the corps, using quantitative
methods. Such a measure helps with understanding and continuously monitoring the impact of a particular program on the beneficiaries.
The theoretical part of the thesis explored relevant concepts relating to impact measurement, analyzing different theories and presenting different approaches of carrying out impact measurement. With that understanding, an impact measurement approach and process was developed. A demonstration of this approach was presented by using the social support program at Pelastusarmeija as a case study. Data was collected and analysed from the Satakunta region in Finland and a measure of the impact on the beneficiaries was calculated using three well defined metrics.
The results from the research showed that most of the beneficiaries were the unemployed and the retired people with very low income, which was expected. Overall, the impact of the social supportprogram was much higher than expected, with an overall impact score of 7.6, where the highest possible impact score is 10. With this quantitative data available each time the measurement is made, it is possible to continuously monitor and compare the impacts from previous impact measurement exercises.
Pelastusarmeija in Finland is part of the international Salvation Army, which is a well-known international organisation that offers a wide range of high-quality services to people in over 133 countries around the world. In Finland, Pelastusarmeija started serving the local communities more than 134 years ago and has 23 branches called corps (or “osasto”) and outposts. In recent years, thousands of people have been beneficiaries to the different services and programs offered by Pelastusarmeija.
Although data on the different services and programs are available, not much is understood about what impact these activities are making in the lives of the beneficiaries, because current data largely measures only program output. For this reason, there is a need to develop an approach that can help in understanding how people are impacted by these services. This research was meant to help address this need, by first examining existing approaches before proposing an approach suitable for measuring impact of Pelastusarmeija’s programs especially at the corps, using quantitative
methods. Such a measure helps with understanding and continuously monitoring the impact of a particular program on the beneficiaries.
The theoretical part of the thesis explored relevant concepts relating to impact measurement, analyzing different theories and presenting different approaches of carrying out impact measurement. With that understanding, an impact measurement approach and process was developed. A demonstration of this approach was presented by using the social support program at Pelastusarmeija as a case study. Data was collected and analysed from the Satakunta region in Finland and a measure of the impact on the beneficiaries was calculated using three well defined metrics.
The results from the research showed that most of the beneficiaries were the unemployed and the retired people with very low income, which was expected. Overall, the impact of the social supportprogram was much higher than expected, with an overall impact score of 7.6, where the highest possible impact score is 10. With this quantitative data available each time the measurement is made, it is possible to continuously monitor and compare the impacts from previous impact measurement exercises.