Find the answers

One of my goals in life is to help organizations understand the difference between outputs and outcomes. Let’s start by defining these terms.

• Outputs: Direct products of an activity. For example, one direct result of the activity “food distribution” would be how many pounds of food were distributed in a year.

• Outcomes: Change created by an activity. For example, one change created by the activity "food distribution" would be the percentage of families that reported moving out of food insecurity due to the food distributions.

You can think about the output as the information you track routinely to monitor the activities and the outcome as the information you use to evaluate the transformation created by each activity. Now think of an activity your organization performs and reports on. Can you differentiate what are your outputs and what are your outcomes?

This differentiation matters because they tell different stories. When we confuse outputs and outcomes, we sometimes think we are measuring one thing when we are measuring something else entirely. However, one is not intrinsically better than the other. The choice of which data to collect will depend on what question you want to answer and why. As long as you are clear about what to measure and intentionally choose what story you want to tell, you’ll be on the right track!