Collaborative Outcomes: Strategies for Building Consensus

What are you working toward?

It seems like a simple question, but defining outcomes (changes that occur because of a program, or the difference that is made by a program) is an intricate process.

If you precisely define the changes you are trying to make in the world, you can measure your progress. Therefore, coming to consensus on the desired outcomes of a program is a critical part of program planning.

Now, imagine this:

What if you're not just dealing with your own program outcomes, but with several programs run by different organizations, working on similar issues?

What if you need to develop common outcomes across all these programs?

Outcomes Alignment, as we call it at Innovation Network, is perhaps the most daunting piece of the already-challenging outcomes development process.

Increasingly, foundations are realizing the importance of Outcomes Alignment.   Without a commitment to common outcomes across grantees, foundations are limited in what they can know about the success of their grantmaking.   Although the grantees are often working toward similar ends, they may use different terms, measure different things, and report information differently.   Results cannot be easily compared across the group, so it's difficult, or even impossible, to show an overall result or unified impact.

Innovation Network has helped funders and grantees get on the same page with outcomes, while still acknowledging the uniqueness of individual programs.   The Outcomes Alignment process works well when grantees in a specific grantmaking area are brought together to:

Learn about developing outcomes and the evaluation process;
Delve into commonalities and differences across programs;
Buy into a common set of long-term outcomes;
Develop chains of outcomes that end with those common long-term outcomes;
Clearly articulate what chains of outcomes their programs are following to get at the common long term outcomes; and
Agree on common methods and definitions when measuring those outcomes.

Grantees will need time to establish benchmarks and show how their program works once the alignment process is over, so before they get started, they need to be assured that they will have will have this time. Otherwise, grantees can be fearful of the implications of the Outcomes Alignment process, and may not participate in the process with the openness that's critical to success.

It's hard enough to get twenty people to agree on anything; getting twenty or more organizations to agree about what the outcomes of their work should be is far from easy, and requires skilled facilitators. But the end result -- aligned outcomes -- means that more of us are working together toward a common good.

For more information on Outcomes Alignment, please contact us.