They are absolutely critical. A well-run non-profit and a social serving agency should be collecting and evaluating its data. It's good business. It's good practice. We need to know that we do good work with our clients. The social innovation, the SCIF funding that Jackie talked about, was instrumental in bringing a new way of thinking about how we measure our impact, and that is the social return-on-investment idea. It's a different way of conceptualizing how we are making impact, and if often helps us to broaden our sense and understanding of the changes that we're helping our clients to realize and how they have ripple effects out into the larger communities and larger systems.
That is critical to understanding the value of the work we do.