But do these figures fully measure the impact of your support? Impact is more than just what what’s delivered – such as giving out supplies, providing vocational training for young people and parents, or helping mothers get prenatal support. Impact is about how lives are improved, how communities grow, how the fabric of society is strengthened. While it is fairly easy for most organizations to count the services they deliver, real impact is actually a very difficult thing to measure.

Measuring impact is especially hard for organizations like SOS Children’s Villages. We support children and families in very tough situations over the long term, and sometimes it’s not clear what the impact is until long after we’ve started. We are not concerned just about short-term outcomes. Success for us is about long-term improvement in lives.

Success is also about supporting others who share our mission. SOS Children’s Villages gets involved in strengthening community networks, working with NGO partners, and advocating for governments to improve how they deliver their services for vulnerable children and families. So our impact shouldn’t be measured just by what we ourselves deliver, but also by what is delivered by those whom we empower.

Learn about how we measure impact