With more than 170 nonprofit and service organizations operating in Grand County, the Grand Foundation has started a new collaborative, countywide program to measure the collective impact of all the county’s nonprofits.
The way it’s designed, the new program, Collectively Grand, will work across the nonprofit sector to quantify the overall impact nonprofits have within the community, including the total investments, jobs, services provided, donations, clients served and other key metrics that will help people better understand the role nonprofits play in the community, according to a news release.
“The Collectively Grand project is about telling a larger story of impact that nonprofits in Grand County provide to our community,” said Megan Ledin, the foundation’s executive director. “By sharing this story we, the nonprofit sector, will be able to better attract donations, leverage funding and ultimately provide better access to services across all sectors.”
The preliminary results of the Collectively Grand program should be available in about 60 days, but the effort is envisioned as a recurring effort that produces regularly updated information about the collective reach of the county’s nonprofits.
The hope is that by quantifying the overall impact nonprofits have in the community, it will help the nonprofit sector better understand the community’s needs and develop messaging, tools and strategies to continue helping meet the needs of the residents who rely on the nonprofits’ services.