I spent a few minutes looking at the impact feature, and I… will also go with “not satisfied”.
From their review of Village Enterprise:
Impact & Results scores of livelihood support programs are based on income generated relative to cost. Programs receive an Impact & Results score of 100 if they increase income for a beneficiary by more than $1.50 for every $1 spent and a score of 75 if income increases by more than $0.85 for every $1 spent. If a nonprofit reports impact but doesn't meet the threshold for cost-effectiveness, it earns a score of 50.
My charitable interpretation is that the “$0.85” number is meant to represent one year’s income, and to imply a higher number over time (e.g. you have new skills or a new business that boosts your income for years to come).
But I also think it’s plausible that “$0.85” is meant to refer to the total increase, such that you could score “75″ by running a program that, in your own estimation, helps people less than just giving them money.
(The “lowest score is 50” element puzzled me at first, but this page clarifies that you score “0″ if CN can’t find enough information to estimate your impact in the first place.)
Still, this is much better than the original CN setup, and I hope this is an early beta version with many improvements on the way.
Moving some comments from the Shortform...
Aaron Gertler wrote:
I don’t see much in the way of improvement … does anyone else?