Why do organisations abandon the measurement systems they build?
Why this research exists
Most impact organisations are not short of data. They have attendance registers, beneficiary forms, monthly returns, funder reports, etc. What they're short of is evidence that reaches a decision and systems that survive the person who built them.
A team invests real effort into a framework, which works for a while and slowly nobody is using it. Almost everyone has watched that happen and almost nobody has written it down, which is exactly why it keeps happening.
We want to know what separates the frameworks that last from the ones that quietly stop. Whether it's resourcing, or authorship, or who gets to put information in. Whether the answer looks the same for a grant-maker in London or for a livelihoods organisation in Bangalore.
About the Impact Evidence Study
Nuvora Impact
WHO'S RUNNING IT
A design-led social impact practice working globally. We build measurement and evaluation systems with organisations rather than for them with participatory design and evaluation rigour in the same room.
The practice is built on a decade of work across global social sectors: a £2m community mental health fund managed across 21 VCSE organisations in South London, a $200m global grant portfolio evaluated and measurement systems built across more than 30 Indian cities.
The Impact Evidence Study is Nuvora Impact's first published research. It is self-funded, which means nobody's interests shape what we ask or what we report.
How it works
Organisations across several countries and sectors, answer 33 questions in about seven minutes.
Respondents are organisations that deliver the work directly and intermediaries that broker it - incubators, networks and capacity builders because our working assumption is that distance from the work shapes evidence practice far more than sector does.
Interested respondents also take part in a longer conversation.
THE FUNDER SIDE
Funders and grant-makers are not part of this study. What they require, what comes back to them and what they do with it requires a different set of questions. It gets its own study, running in 2027. If you fund the work, tell us and we'll send it to you when it opens.
ON THE SAMPLE
This is a purposive sample, not a representative one. We approach organisations directly rather than drawing a random sample, which means the findings describe the organisations who took part and not the sector as a whole. We don't publish percentages dressed up as sector statistics.
PRE-REGISTERED
What we're predicting
We wrote down our expectations before collecting a single response. Publishing them means we can be shown to be wrong, which is rather the point.
If any of these turn out wrong, that's the finding we'll lead with.
01
Sector won't predict how mature an organisation's evidence system is. Distance from the work will.
How far you sit from where the work actually happens, whether delivering it directly or brokering across a portfolio, in one city or across a dozen countries, should matter more than whether you work in health, education or livelihoods.
02
Frameworks written by funders or external consultants will be abandoned more often than frameworks an organisation built for itself.
We're asking organisations on the receiving end. If this holds, it's an argument for participatory design made with evidence rather than conviction and the question we'll put to funders themselves in the companion study.
03
Many organisations that involve people with lived experience will report that those people cannot influence decisions.
Consultation recorded as participation. We expect to find a measurable gap between who is asked and who is heard.
What you get for taking part
Your own six-dimension profile, within two weeks. How your organisation scores on purpose, instrument, aperture, ownership, use and autonomy. Where the weakest point sits and what usually shifts it.
The full findings, published late January 2027. Free and ungated. Everyone who took part receives them first.
Nothing else. No mailing list, no follow-up sequence, no sales call you didn't ask for.
What we'll do with the findings
Publish them openly and free. No gate, no form, no email required to read them.
We'll also use what we learn to sharpen a method we're developing for building evidence systems with organisations rather than for them. We'd rather say that plainly than pretend this is disinterested research.
OCT 2026
Study opens
ROLLING
Profiles returned within two weeks of each response
NOV 2026
Follow-up conversations with interested respondents
DEC 2026
Study closes
DEC 2026
Early signals published: three things emerging
LATE JAN 2027
Full findings published, free and ungated
Timeline
How we handle your information
Responses are confidential and reported in aggregate. We never publish a breakdown covering fewer than five organisations. We don't name any organisation without written permission, which we ask for separately at the end. Contact details are stored apart from responses and you can ask us to delete everything at any time.
Take part
Seven minutes. Your profile back within two weeks. The study closes in December 2026.
Start the study
→
If you think a colleague or peer organisation should be part of this, tell us and we'll send them the study or you can forward them the link. And if English isn't the easiest language for this, write to us and we'll conduct it as a conversation instead.
The Study Privacy notice connect@nuvoraimpact.com
Run by Nuvora Impact Private Limited, Bangalore. Self-funded.
Where evidence meets purpose
© 2026 Nuvora Impact Private Limited. All rights reserved.