SVA Fundamentals for Impact

Helping ambitious leaders and their organisations answer critical questions about their organisation's effectiveness.

In SVA’s work across the sector over the last 20 plus years, we’ve seen that despite best attempts, many funding and social purpose organisations struggle to clearly assess and articulate their effectiveness. 

This then hampers their ability to improve their impact.

We developed the SVA Fundamentals for Impact to help ambitious leaders and their organisations to answer critical questions about their effectiveness. The Fundamentals provide a framework for thinking systematically about the areas that can affect an organisation’s ability to create social change. It then provides a clear parthway to prioritise and act on that information to be more effective.

While the Fundamentals are not the final word when it comes to identifying organisational characteristics that promote effectiveness, we believe the framework adds to current practice in four ways. The Fundamentals:

1. Are derived from three sources of knowledge: theoretical, empirical, and experiential. Most research and tools give much more weight to one or maybe two of these.
2. Give more emphasis to the role of the organisation within the broader ecosystem than most other frameworks to avoid the problem of creating sub-optimum solutions to pressing problems. The SVA Fundamentals reflect the growing appreciation that being an effective organisation requires working with others to change the system rather than going it alone.
3. Combine international research with experience in the Australian social sector. The SVA Fundamentals are not only applicable to Australia but they have been developed with this country specifically in mind.
4. Are explicit about making sure what the organisation does is centred around the needs of the end beneficiary, not the organisation. It is all too easy for an organisation to focus on itself rather than keep the needs of those who it intends to help at the forefront.

The framework

Download the framework below and work through each of the characteristics to choose which description best applies to your organisation. Each of the characteristics is weighted equally as we recognise their importance varies by organisation and points in time. 

You’ll be provided with an assessment of your effectiveness against each of the characteristics that can guide future performance and priorities.