Post 100: A koan for social impact
This is my 100th post.
I thought about doing a retrospective. I thought about a subscriber drive. I thought about a greatest hits list. Instead I want to leave you with a question. It’s a simple question, but like a koan, the more you meditate on it the more complex it becomes.
If you stopped measuring, would you still know if it was working?
Before you try to answer it and move on. Wait. Sit with the question for a second.
Most people I work with in the social sector would immediately say yes. They would know. They would know from the conversations that changed, from what they see shifting in the people they serve, from what the community tells them without anyone designing a survey. The knowing is already there. It has been there the whole time.
So if you would still know, then what is the measurement for? Who is it serving? Is it helping you learn, or is it helping you prove something to someone else?
It’s not a trick question. Accountability matters. Funders have a right to understand how resources are used. But there is a difference between measurement that serves learning and measurement that serves justification. Between evaluation that helps a community see what it already knows and evaluation that extracts data from a community so someone far away can make a decision.
And some of you would sit with that question and realize no, actually, you would not know. You are so deep inside the work that you have lost perspective. For you, the question points the other direction. Not away from measurement, but toward it. Toward evaluation as a way of seeing what you are too close to see.
Both answers are honest. That is what makes this a real question and not a gotcha.
I have spent nearly one year writing about evaluation, AI, social impact, and also Zen, and the spaces where those things press against each other. The thread running through all of it is this: the purpose of evaluation is not the report. It is not even the learning. It is the human connection that happens when people sit together and try to understand what is working, what is not, and what to do next. The value is relational. It is reciprocal. It lives between people, not in a dashboard.
That is also why AI in this space makes people uneasy. Not because the technology is inherently bad, but because it threatens to replace the relational core with something algorithmic. Something that feels efficient but hollow. It does not have to be that way. AI can be a tool that supports human connection rather than substituting for it. But only if we are honest about what we are protecting and why.
So here is the question again. No framework attached. No rubric. No theory of change.
If you stopped measuring, would you still know if it was working?
I do not know your answer. But I think the question is worth 100 more posts and I invite you to sit with it today.
~Sadie
Anthralytic is a strategy and evaluation studio that helps mission-driven teams clarify and amplify their impact. If you make decisions about resources in the social sector, whether you call yourself an evaluator or not, this newsletter is for you.
