Early on a grey Tuesday morning in Sydney, forty SIMNA members met at the headquarters of DLA Piper to hear from Results Based Accountability (RBA) practitioners. The aim of the event was to get an introduction to RBA as an impact measurement method and a real-life example of its implementation.

Before presentations began, attendees caught up and networked over breakfast. Matt Bevan, committee member of the NSW SIMNA Chapter, then welcomed everyone and introduced other committee members. He handed over to Brian Smith, Executive Officer at Local Community Services Association and chair of the event. Brian set the tone by encouraging participants to both engage with and challenge the speakers sharing their social impact measurement journeys.

Brian introduced Louisa McKay, Manager with the Centre for Family Work Practice and Results Leadership Group Australia. Louisa, an expert practitioner of RBA, had the challenging task of describing and demonstrating RBA in a nutshell. She explained that RBA is an outcomes-based quality improvement framework that clearly separates community outcomes from client outcomes. This separation means that programs and program staff are assessed against their own performance and not that of the general community, facilitating meaningful measurement of program impact and identifying areas for program improvement. To do this, RBA starts by identifying ideal community conditions and works backwards to examine how this ideal could be achieved.

To give us an insight into this process, participants worked in groups and explored the issue of youth engagement in education and employment. More than 27% of Australians aged 17-24 were not in full-time study or work in 2011, with rates as high as 40% in disadvantaged areas (see this report for more information). Groups considered:

• Characteristics a community would have if all young people were engaged in employment or education e.g. diverse employment opportunities and access to mental health early intervention services
• The main issues that currently prevent this from happening e.g. intergenerational unemployment and lack of coordination between services and schools
• Approaches we could take to addressing these issues e.g. alternative pathways through education, mentoring programs and place-based approaches to program design.

In addition to its use as an impact measurement tool, Louisa explained that RBA also assists in the development of performance outcomes and evaluation tools. Applying these tools across programs can rapidly embed RBA, and impact measurement generally, in organisational practice.

Martin Kiel then reported on his experience implementing RBA at MTC Work Solutions. MTC used RBA to evaluate their Minto Access Point service, a community assistance centre located on the Minto Housing Estate. As a result of the findings, MTC have made significant changes to the service.

Martin shared a number of key learnings with participants, including:

• The importance of internal buy-in to the success of impact measurement
• Results should be shared, at least internally
• Coupling RBA with Most Significant Change helped tell their impact story
• The evaluation is not an end point: once it is complete, the next big step is acting on its recommendations

Martin explained that MTC would do another RBA evaluation. He described it as a simple and practical method for measuring impact and encouraged participants to give it a go.

Brian wrapped up the forum by asking participants what their organisations could start doing now to activate the RBA process. He also invited everyone to propose topics and speakers for future SIMNA events. We are always interested to hear your thoughts on this, so please comment on our LinkedIn page or email Martina if you have an idea for a future SIMNA event.

Overall, this jam-packed event gave us a great introduction to core RBA concepts and a real-life example of the method in action. Thanks to Brian, Louisa and Martin for sharing their insights and DLA Piper for supporting the event.

 

Christina Jarron