Connecting the money a funder moves to the outcomes it actually produces.
Impact directors went from needing an admin or a consultant to set up their impact framework to building it themselves, from the outcomes they want to the indicators that prove them.
Crawl, Walk and Run released in Nonprofit Cloud, each phase building on the last
In use at leading nonprofits, from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to YMCA of Delaware
Partners built a shared indicator library from an idea we couldn’t fit on our own roadmap
Funders now want proof of outcomes, not just activity, yet nonprofits had no structured way to connect their programs to the impact they produce. Without that line from dollars to impact, they struggle to show what funding achieved and to win it again.
Funder requirements have shifted. There was a point where you could get away with output data. But now outcome data is the differentiator.
Program Director
I collaborated with the Lead UX Designer and PM to build out the vision, then carried it from research through to build-ready design.
What I owned
The product shipped in phases, each one a building block for the next. Together they trace how it evolved: from defining impact, to measuring it, to having it reported without being asked.
A visual builder that links a strategy to its outcomes, indicators and the programs delivering them — so the logic model is something you navigate, not a document you maintain. A guided wizard for turning a measure into a formula — pick a template, point each variable at real data, and see the calculation resolve before saving it.
Results surfaced against goal, with recommendations that tell a fundraiser where to act next — closing the loop from dollars raised back to outcomes achieved.
Agentforce
I need to prepare an annual impact report for one of our major funders. Can you help me create a report that clearly demonstrates the outcomes we’ve achieved with their funding?
Absolutely. Stories can connect the quantitative outcomes to the human impact of the funding. I can identify participant stories approved for external sharing, verify consent, and prepare a narrative highlighting the participant’s journey, support received, and outcomes achieved.
I’ll assemble the report with an executive summary, grant overview, key impact metrics, targets versus actuals, expenditure breakdown, approved participant stories, lessons learned, and next-year priorities.
2024 Funder Impact Report
The agent watches reporting deadlines and outcome data, then acts first: drafting a funder’s dashboard from their own framework, surfacing a result worth leading a renewal with, and flagging the measures with no data behind them. Each one arrives with its reason and waits for your approval.
Organizations told us they don’t know exactly what to measure, and often propose metrics they have no way to collect data for. So the product had to guide metric choice, roll results up into one view of the organization while still letting anyone drill down to the record behind a number, and turn that data into insight each audience can act on, whether a director, a program lead or a funder.
We don’t know exactly what to measure. … We’ve never talked through it. We usually talk program minded.
Selamta Family Project
Less mature organizations cite outputs such as people served or sessions run as evidence of impact, while more sophisticated ones draw a hard line between the two. Terminology varies enough from org to org that the vocabulary has to be settled before any tool can help.
“This has been a huge struggle for us.” Teams have a rough sense of what a long-term outcome looks like, but no baseline to measure from and no obvious first step. Defining a framework is an org-wide exercise, and the fear of getting it wrong stalls it further.
The reports nonprofits produce today no longer satisfy the people funding them. Newer organizations feel it hardest: without a track record, a logic model is how they gather evidence and build credibility. Established orgs, already trusted, feel less pressure to formalize one.
Collection is spreadsheet- and paper-based, field observations get typed up afterwards, and existing tools are clunky enough that analysis is slow. Under traditional M&E cycles, two or three cohorts pass through a program before improvements are introduced.
Data literacy is uneven, particularly on program teams, and the data itself often is not accessible or actionable for the people furthest from it. Staff enter more, and better, when they can see the impact their entry produces.
The challenges constituents face vary enormously, so progress resists a single tidy metric. Measuring it means quantifying subjective change and capturing observational data, person by person, rather than counting one number across a cohort.
Impact framework
How is my impact strategy doing?
Stored as indicator values
82%
Target 75%
78Health score
4 of 5 outcomes on or near target
Vision
Turn data into tangible success stories and insights people can act on.
Help organizations decide what to measure, then roll results up across the organization or drill down to a single program, place or person.
Suggested metrics and ready-made templates walk impact directors through setup, so they can build a framework without an admin or a consultant.
Insights should surface where people already work, so the right finding reaches them without digging through reports.
Every view should end in a next step, whether that’s a follow-up, a funder update or a program change, not just a number to read.
Mapping impact strategy and defining your indicators
The goal was to build an outcome model that could scale across industries. Working with the PM and Engineering Architect, we mapped out the outcome model and the indicator calculation flows, then turned them into a template library that organizations could use out of the box, or clone and tailor to their own programs.
The model underneath every industry. An outcome is measured by an indicator against a target over a time period. A program delivers services, and a plan template groups the goals and services each participant works through. When a participant’s top goal changes status, the result rolls up to the outcome on its own.
A workforce nonprofit runs a Job Readiness program to help at-risk families reach financial stability. Every participant gets a care plan from the same template, and when a case worker marks the top goal, Find a stable job, as complete, the outcome result updates on its own.
A university wants more first-year students to return for their second year. Advisors give each student a success plan from the First-Year Success template, and as students reach good standing, the retention result updates without anyone building a report.
A health system enrolls patients with diabetes in a care management program. Care coordinators assign each patient a care plan, and as patients bring their A1C below 7%, the outcome result updates in time for quality reviews.
A utility runs an assistance program to lower energy bills for low-income households. Each household gets an action plan after a home energy audit, and as households cut their energy use by 15%, the outcome result updates for program leads and regulators.
We built on the theory of change, the model most organizations already use: problem, activities, outputs, outcomes, impact. Impact directors could bring the framework from their whiteboard instead of learning a new one, and always knew where each piece lived in Outcome Management.
In our first MVP, we identified dead ends in the flow where there was no guidance on what to do next. This led to our exploration of a single guided experience for impact strategy setup.
Every indicator needs calculation logic that links it to its data source, and writing that logic was work only an admin could do. We set out to templatize it and make it visual, so impact directors could set up the calculation themselves: pick a formula template, point each variable at the records it counts, and see the result take shape before it runs.
Dashboard and reporting
Before Outcome Management, nonprofits monitored their programs through dashboards like these: dozens of charts, built and maintained by an admin, tracking activity such as assessments completed, case plans created and timely data entry. They showed whether the work was getting done, but not whether people’s lives were changing, and finding a single insight meant scanning chart after chart.
What someone needs to see depends on their role. Some need data for a single program, others need a view across every program and outcome. So we outlined a set of dashboard template patterns that work across user profiles: from the impact director, who looks across the whole impact strategy, to the program manager, who tracks their program’s metrics but wants to know how that data moves the outcomes it feeds.
Leveraging Agentforce to provide actionable insights, summarization and report generation capabilities
With Agentforce built into Outcome Management, impact directors can ask for what they need in plain language. The agent summarizes how outcomes and indicators are performing, then helps build custom reports, like a funder impact report with an executive summary, key metrics, targets against actuals and participant stories, ready to share with internal teams and external stakeholders.
Why it’s at risk
Agentforce traces the score back to the indicators and program data behind it.
Outcome
Indicators
Program
Outcome
Increase food security of young families
Indicator
% of families with two weeks of food
Indicator
Food delivered vs. distribution capacity
Program
Food Distribution
Customer stories
Leading nonprofits measure outcomes to deliver more impactful programs and services.
