Benchmark 2

Know what success looks like



Benchmark 2: “Know what success looks like” requires breaking KPIs down into long- and short-term, and having consideration for both business and beneficiary outcomes.

Benchmark 2 Components:

  1. Defined long-term KPIs
  2. Defined short-term KPIs
  3. KPIs are outcome-focused


1. Defined long-term KPIs

Setting a longer-term goal ensures (often) limited company resources are rallied around programmes and activities that will be value add and core to strategy. For example, AT&T have already beaten their goal to deliver 1 million employee mentoring hours to students by 2020.


2. Defined short-term KPIs

Short-term KPIs are a great way of setting expectations and reinforcing company culture & values on a regular basis.


Setting a target number of volunteer hours per month was very common (Kabbage, a FinTech start-up based in the Southern US, in fact make it completely mandatory to do a minimum of 32 hours of volunteering per year for all employees), as was % of employees engaging in volunteering. Other examples ranged from to tracking the “Thank You” letters sent from student beneficiaries at DonorsChoose to social media mentions & influencers at Booz Allen (from a CSR marketing perspective).


3. KPIs are outcome-focused

Moving from measuring inputs to improving outcomes is not usually so obviously measured, nor is it a short-term intervention. In education specifically, EY found that a three-year time horizon was minimum for measuring outcomes.


As reiterated by CECP in their Giving in Numbers 2017 report, The ROI Institute outlines exactly how higher “levels” of data measurement are more valuable in their framework for data capture. Applied to measuring employee engagement related to a volunteering programme the framework might look like this:

  • Level 0 (project input data only) e.g. data about investment in volunteer initiative
  • Level 1 (reaction data) e.g. % of employees taking up volunteering
  • Level 2 (learning data) e.g. skill acquisition by employee volunteers
  • Level 3 (application data) e.g. is employee using skill on the job
  • Level 4 (impact data) e.g. how engaged employee volunteers are as a result
  • Level 5 (ROI data) e.g. financial benefits and costs of volunteering


Large companies such as Google measure if employee skills have been improved and utilised as a result of volunteering, whilst AT&T and Coca Cola look for graduation rates of their student beneficiaries.


However, outcome measurement is not just for companies with capacity for recruiting teams of data analysts. Remind, a start-up that helps teachers better engage with students and parents, is starting to experiment with outcomes-focused KPIs such as student attendance & attainment related to its product.


My start-up is able to measure the impact of employee mentoring on student confidence, attainment and longer-term destinations. We were just sure to bake it in from Day 1.

What each tier does well

Established Company


This tier were particularly good at defining long-term KPIs (for example, many set targets to reach a certain number of beneficiaries within 5 years).


Did tech help?
Aside from technology supporting the scalability of volunteer programmes and thus the likelihood of reaching long-term targets (for example utilising e-mentoring), technology was not relevant to actually defining the KPIs themselves.



High-Growth companies performed below average against this benchmark compared to other tiers, but there were a few very promising examples of meauring outcome-focused KPIs.


Did tech help?
Given its nature, technology was not relevant to actually ensuring KPIs were outcome-focused, although in Airbnb’s case they could draw upon extensive data analytics of their users to see the impact of their Open Homes initiative. In general, it was much more important to work with third-party partners, whom are typically experts at working with beneficiaries long-term in their respective areas.



SMEs were good at defining short-term KPIs (scoring 3.75/5 on avg), such as targets to meet a certain number of volunteer hours per month.


Did tech help?
Aside from technology supporting the scalability of volunteer programmes and thus the likelihood of reaching short-term targets, technology was not relevant to actually defining the KPIs themselves.

Filling the gaps

Toggle through each tier below to explore the weakest areas of performance against this benchmark:  


How tech might help

For all tiers, it’s important to delegate impact measurement (of beneficiaries) to third-party partners, who are likely best placed to do so, although business impact (understandably) should remain in-house.


In a few instances, third-parties had opened up their APIs to link in with in-house HR systems (to help compare business and beneficiary outcomes, and ROI), although this was a luxury and quite rare to find in non-profit partners.

Case Studies:

Tech as an enabler

Technology was not particularly relevant to this benchmark.

Education-specific best practice

Gap Logo

Gap Inc.’s This Way Ahead programme is a 10-week paid internship & curriculum for disadvantaged 16-24 year olds, facilitated by employee volunteers and Gap’s store managers. In measuring the degree to which the company actually helps students gain the skills they need to land their first job, Gap is ruthless in measuring KPIs that are outcome focused: the rate of completion of the internship, number of job offers, number of acceptance offers, various measures of confidence improvement, alongside various soft / work skills (such as ability to write a CV or open a bank account) and how all this compares across various cohorts of young people (with support from their non-profit partners in collecting such data).

They also appreciate how crucial middle-managers are to overall volunteering success and so are sure to measure highly relevant business impacts of the programme to engage them e.g. loyalty of programme hires (vs. recruiting store hires externally).


Airbnb logo

Whilst Airbnb’s Human team are leading the charge on longer-term, outcome-focused KPIs going forward (they are working on unique product solutions to difficult social problems in housing, livelihood creation, and bias/perception), employee sentiment is highly valued as a short-term KPI (alongside the usual volunteer hours, etc.).

Multiple surveys throughout the year are utilised to measure employee sentiment, alongside Airbnb’s “secret sauce”: a team called “ground control” who straddle HR and employee experience and are solely focused on celebrating Airbnb’s culture and employees.

Next: Read onwards to Benchmark 3 >>

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