I was intrigued and inspired this morning by the following, which the Social Enterprise Alliance posted yesterday on the npEnterprise Forum:
Eric Dawson, an Ashoka fellow and the CEO of Peace First, recently wrote a beautiful piece for Social Enterprise Alliance. It’s about working for social change that we may never see happen in our lifetimes, and why it’s still essential to do so. An excerpt:
I was asked recently how I knew that the work I did mattered. I began the usual way – statistics, evaluation reports – and the woman interrupted: “No. How do you know your work really matters? Are you really making a difference?” She wasn’t asking me about data. She was asking if my life’s work had lasting meaning.
Many of us strive to understand the impact of our work in ways that are measurable. Whether it is acres tilled, test scores improved, waste recycled, or laws changed, these are important measures for understanding effective practice and improving our work. But I would argue that questions of impact are also spiritual questions: how do we know what we do really matters, when it is impossible to truly know?
Good luck!
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Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing and implementation strategies.