The Salvation Army Outcomes Measurement Framework

Our mission

The Salvation Army is a Christian movement dedicated to sharing the love of Jesus by:

This mission informs the outcomes we want to measure.

Our outcome domains

The Salvation Army uses sector-specific frameworks and best practice to promote change across the following outcome domains:

WELLBEING AND SPIRITUALITY

SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS

By measuring these outcomes, we determine our impact and the extent to which we are achieving our mission and vision.

Our collective impact

The Salvation Army measures and evaluates the impact of our work in fulfilling our mission and vision and this information is used to improve our services:

PRACTICALLY (CARING FOR PEOPLE AND WORKING FOR JUSTICE)

SOCIALLY (BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES)

SPIRITUALLY (CREATING FAITH PATHWAYS)

Our outcomes measurement framework enables greater accountability and supports our continuous improvement. It is a significant milestone on our journey towards understanding and appreciating our full impact.

The research team is guided by the following principles to develop the outcomes measurement framework:

1. Accessible and Meaningful: Outcomes measurement tools and processes are useful, relevant, trauma-informed, culturally-appropriate and accessible to those involved.

2. Participatory and Collaborative: We value the collective knowledge and expertise of our frontline team, people with lived experience and our community partners. Thus, participation and collaboration with these stakeholders are actively sought. We also strive to ensure that our projects are inclusive of all communities, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and people from diverse cultural backgrounds, through active consultation, collaboration, and the establishment of advisory and steering groups that include representatives from these populations.

3. Holistic: When developing our outcomes tools, we value and take into account the physical, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing of people, their connections to the communities and environments around them.

4. Ethical: All outcome measurement projects are aligned with the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and the Australian Government Guide to Evaluation under the Indigenous Evaluation Strategy to protect the wellbeing of those engaged in the projects and to ensure that the benefits of projects would be shared with the stakeholders.

Based on those principles, the research team works closely with frontline teams to ensure the outcomes measurement and reporting tools are appropriate to their clients, feasible to administer and useful to their services, whilst still meeting measurement best practices. We also work with the client database team to make the outcomes data accessible to frontline workers. Therefore, outcomes data can be utilised by workers and community members to review if the supports have enabled community members to progress in desirable areas, and/or to prompt discussion about required supports to achieve desirable outcomes. The holistic nature of the outcome measurement may also help to identify other areas that community members would like to tackle, which sometimes are addressed through referral services. The research team also works towards obtaining feedback from people with lived experience on the outcomes framework, such as the suitability of outcomes indicators, data collection processes and how they can be used for the betterment of people accessing services.

When developing an outcomes framework, the research team also takes into account the diversity of funding reporting requirements and their outcomes framework to ensure services across the nation are able to meet their reporting requirements and remain competitive in maintaining current funding and in securing new funding opportunities. Where possible, TSA client database team also develops automatic and safe data upload to funding bodies’ databases, which allow TSA frontline services to use only one database to report to multiple funding or government databases. This strategy has reduced the administration burden of data collection, allowing workers to focus more time on supporting community members.

As all key streams are progressing with their outcomes measurement implementation, TSA will have more visibility in its collective progress and mechanisms in achieving its mission and vision. For more information about the Stronger Communities project, please contact your designated Relationship Manager.