Reach: What to Consider When Calculating and Communicating
The number of people reached by an organization is a fundamental part of telling a compelling story about effectiveness and impact. Organizations want to know that their work wasn’t done in vain. They also want to be able to comfortably take credit for the work being done. Calculating reach helps to do both of these by setting up the potential of your impact.
Spoiler alert: Reach is really about your organization’s values and assumptions
Reach can be defined as the number of people (or another relevant unit of analysis) that are affected by an organization. That seems simple enough, right? If it was that simple, we probably wouldn’t have written this blog entry! While the way you compute reach is important, the values and assumptions you bring to the table are just as, if not even more important. Here are some things that need to be considered before you deal with a single number.
To get to understanding how many people are reached by an organization (or a group of organizations if you’re a funder), you need to ask several important questions before you even start counting.
What are you comfortable claiming?
What’s in the scope for the count?
What does it mean to be “reached” or “affected?”
Who are your direct & indirect beneficiaries?
How is funding being used?
What kind of claims are you comfortable making?
It’s important to be realistic about what you feel comfortable taking credit for. While there is often pressure to have the largest number possible, get realistic relative to the funding, programming or support offered. Consider the assumptions your organization will make around this number. How will the number be used (e.g., marketing, learning)? What are your organization’s values (e.g., leadership, authenticity, growth)? What kind of message do you want to send about your organization or company (e.g., “Our scale is a differentiator”, “We are a humble community partner”, “Depth is more important to us than breadth”)? These will help you to determine your level of comfort with the kinds of claims that can be made.
The scope of your reach should reflect the work you do or fund
The scope of your reach count should correspond with the work you do. You don’t want to include people who aren’t actually receiving your support. Do you run programs? Are you a funder? Do you provide policy advocacy work? The type of support your organization provides should help with determining what is in scope when counting reach. Again, values and assumptions come into play here. Multiple organizations can be offering similar services, but their values will dictate what to include in the scope of the count. One size does not fit all.
It seems obvious, but what does it actually mean to be “reached”?
You should clearly define what being “reached” means, which is what needs to occur for an individual or organization to be counted. Your definition will depend on the type and focus of your work. Some potential definitions are: program participants, grantees, resource recipients, people living in a particular region, members of a particular group, etc..
It is essential to have a shared reach definition so everyone in your organization is on the same page regarding who is counted and how they will be counted. While who is being reached may be obvious, people might have different assumptions about the focus of your work. This is especially important if you’re a funder as you’ll probably be asking your grantees to collect this information.
Let’s talk about Direct & indirect beneficiaries
Before you even decide who is in and who is out of the count, it’s important to define who your direct and indirect beneficiaries are. Direct and indirect beneficiaries are both receiving positive support from you, just at different levels. One is not better than the other. Direct beneficiaries are those who receive direct support from your organization and/or your grantees. Indirect beneficiaries experience a positive change from interacting with direct beneficiaries, instead of your organization and/or grantees.
An organization funding policy advocacy work, for example, may not have many direct beneficiaries (the number of organizations they fund or the number of states they lobby), but their indirect beneficiary reach, those who benefit from the policy advocacy of their grantees, would be much higher because that’s where their work is focused.
Once you define who your direct and indirect beneficiaries are, you need to figure out who is going to be included in the count. This is where talking to colleagues, leaders, grantees, peers, will be helpful. Do you include only direct beneficiaries or both? How far out do you count indirect beneficiaries? The decision on who to include is going to depend on your comfort level with your reach claims.
Of course, after you define your beneficiaries and determine who is included, you need to figure out where the count data will come from. Direct beneficiaries should be relatively easy to count accurately. They can be counted from artifacts like attendance sheets or website analytics. However, counting up direct beneficiaries isn’t always easy for a variety of reasons (like technology issues or staff transitions). Tracking down counts of people who are one or more steps removed from your organization could take up a lot of resources. When determining who direct and beneficiaries are, it’s important to revisit those values and assumptions. Are exact counts necessary or are estimates fine to report?
How funding is being used
For funders, the count of reach is going to going to depend on how the funding is being used and whether it is intended to fund a specific project, or provide general operating or unrestricted support. When funds go towards Programmatic funding its usually pretty clear who should be included in the calculation, but considering general operating support can be a bit trickier and it really depends on what you’re comfortable including. Can you make the claim that this type of funding reached all participants? Or maybe just a segment?
One option is to look at how much of an organization’s budget your funding supports and then decide whether to include all individuals reached or a representative proportion. For example, If you are supporting a $10million budget with a $2 million grant for general ops, your funding is covering 20% of the organizations budget, so you might claim reach for 20% of the beneficiaries. Then again, you may consider that general operating funds can benefit the entire organization, so you opt to claim all beneficiaries.
It will depend on your organization’s values and assumptions around claims and purpose of funding.
Reporting considerations
Communicating reach really involves your organizational assumptions and values! Different audiences will require different rules. Funders may just want to know about your direct beneficiaries. Peers will probably look for a number that’s as methodologically sound as possible. Leadership and marketing departments often want a reach number that’s as large as possible because it’s more compelling. Make sure you’re clear with what those rules are and control their application. You don’t want a dozen versions of the same number being reported. Again, a clear understanding of your level of reporting comfort and your organization’s values will help immensely.
Some tips for the actual calculation
So, you have your answers to all of the above questions above. Here are some things to consider when calculating your reach numbers:
Avoid double counting when appropriate. If there are people participating in more than 1 program, should they be counted more than once?
Be clear when calculating timebound reach numbers (annual vs. cumulative).
Exact vs. estimated: the number of beneficiaries can be difficult to determine. Do you need to be exact or could an estimate be appropriate?
Remember: Reach IS NOT impact
It’s important to remember, and to communicate, that reach IS NOT impact! Reach tells you your potential for impact, but does not say anything about whether anything changed, what that change looked like, or if the change lasted. Be sure to manage expectations around what reach is and is not, especially when reporting on your reach number.
However you calculate reach, document it!
Since there are many different possible definitions, it is important to succinctly provide that definition whenever you’re reporting on your organization’s reach. This is where footnotes or endnotes come in handy. Given how specific the definition can be, not providing it could be misleading or confusing. While not everyone will concerns themselves with the specifics of definitions, there will be people who will care a great deal.
Take the time to consider your reach assumptions before calculation
Reach is an important number to report. It’s often one of the more compelling parts of your impact story (but is not impact on its own) as it reflects your organizational values and assumptions. However, before any calculation takes place, take the time to determine what needs to go into your reach calculation beyond the numbers and document your decisions.
Need help figuring out what goes into your organization’s Reach Count? Maybe aligning the team on assumptions and values is proving to be tricky. Our team is here to help! 