Numbers or meanings? How the logic of measuring results in donor relations is changing

This blog also appears on the website of the National Network of Local Philanthropy Development. 

Daria Rybalchenko, National Network of Local Philanthropy Development

In February this year, the second meeting of the Measuring What Matters working group was held in Tangier, Morocco. We were warmly welcomed by the Tamkeen Community Foundation for Human Development. Their approach to work deserves a separate article, because it is a completely different approach in terms of the way of working above the goal of work.

This trip coincided with a freeze in USAID funding and a reduction in support from other governments. In this context, the topic of measurement became even more important. Almost every conversation revolved around the question:

For whom and why do we measure the results of our work?

In one of my previous articles, I wrote about how we, as an organization, are building a culture of working with data primarily for ourselves. But the reality is that any organization also needs to communicate results to donors. And this is where another question arises:

How does measurement for local donors differ from measurement for institutional (international) donors? In other words, what do international donors value in your data, and what do local donors value?

Quantity vs completeness of assistance

Many international donors measure effectiveness primarily by the number of people who have received assistance, even though this indicator does not always indicate whether the need has actually been met. Often, another criterion is added to this – how many dollars there are per person. This can certainly be a marker of effectiveness, but at the same time, this logic often reduces the quality and practicality of the aid itself. Usually, this methodology is not spelled out in public documents, and one can only learn about it from private conversations.

On the other hand, according to our recent research, few local donors are actively involved in tracking the results of their contributions. As a rule, reports or acknowledgements from funded initiatives are enough for them. However, in conversations, local donors take a much broader view of effectiveness: they are interested in how the project has affected the community as a whole, and whether it has actually contributed to solving a problem — not just how many people have been reached.

I especially felt this difference in approaches during the second Humanitarian Leadership Conference in Ukraine, on the panel where I had the opportunity to speak. Ihor Liski, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the investment company EFI Group, emphasized that only through testing new approaches and implementing innovations can real change be achieved and resources used effectively. Local donors usually view aid through the lens of long-term change for the community.

Therefore, if you are targeting local donors, it is worth shifting the focus of measurement: from emphasizing quantitative indicators to conducting a comprehensive and long-term analysis of impact. Local donors, being part of the same community, continue to live nearby after a project ends, so they are primarily interested not in the final number in a report, but in whether the aid brought tangible benefits to people, businesses and local authorities — and how it changes the life of the community as a whole.

Numbers vs values

Let’s take a fairly classic case as an example — the creation of local businesses or new jobs. Two researchers wrote about this very insightfully on The Conversation platform, in a piece entitled Why donors should ask local communities what matters to them while deciding what success looks like.

A similar example was shared by Gabriel Kihara from the Kenya Community Development Foundation during our meeting in Tangier. They were implementing a programme to support local employment. However, the donor insisted that the main indicator of effectiveness should be the number of hours worked by each person employed through the project. This required significant resources from the organization: instead of focusing on providing quality support to people, the team spent time filling out detailed reporting documentation.

In our own experience — in the “Harvest Way” project supported by the Fondation de France and the Bosch Foundation — we, on the contrary, focus on how the quality of life of participants changes after receiving support. In addition, we find it important to measure how the program affects social capital in the community: whether cohesion is growing, whether new connections are forming between people, and whether participants are becoming more active in local community foundation initiatives.

These two approaches clearly demonstrate the difference in focus: institutional donors often prioritize changes reflected in numbers, while local donors value real changes — at the level of people’s values and their relationships with one another.

Bureaucracy vs creativity

As the employment example shows, for institutional donors, numbers are often the foundation for evaluating success. But behind these numbers there must always be supporting documents, structured reports, logframes and performance indicators. All of this turns the project team into administrators of reporting rather than those experimenting with new approaches or implementing bold ideas.

Local donors, on the other hand, often focus on something else. They rarely ask for tons of paperwork — what matters to them is people’s stories, easily digestible numbers, visualizations, and short, emotionally engaging presentations. In today’s fast-paced information flow, it’s hard to hold attention, so the format in which you present change is just as important as the results themselves. A presentation should evoke emotion, be memorable and inspire others to join in collective action.

As local organizations, we have often participated in trainings funded by institutional donors. These very programmes shaped our understanding of the “correct” way to evaluate results — where numbers outweigh meaning, and reports matter more than reflections on real impact. We learned how to live in this system; we learned to think in the language of logframes, spreadsheets, and indicators. And we often convinced ourselves that this was the only right way. Because that’s how we were taught.

But today, as international funding is paused or reduced, we are receiving a clear signal: it’s time to reassess this system. If we want to build sustainable partnerships with local donors, we need to let go of automated, familiar approaches. We need to go through our own “unlearning” — to stop thinking solely in numbers, to allow ourselves more creativity, and to seek new, local ways of measuring. Ways that don’t just demonstrate achievements, but help us deeply understand the changes taking place in our communities.

By: Daria Rybalchenko, Chair of the National Network of Local Philanthropy Development