Impact

Measuring Our Impact

As a public health organization, AFSP is committed to turning data into action to save lives. By collecting and leveraging data in strategic and thoughtful ways, we can demonstrate the value of our work. We use data to assess the strengths of our initiatives and identify areas for improvement.

At AFSP, we conduct evaluations to enhance learning, improve effectiveness and inform future decisions. These evaluations answer questions such as:

• Are we making an impact?
• What’s the scale of this impact?
• Who are we reaching?
• How close are we to reaching our goals?
• How can we strengthen AFSP’s efforts?

AFSP’s Impact Measurement Team employs rigorous and systematic methods to measure the influence of our work. Our team develops data collection tools, creates data reports, analyzes and evaluates outcomes, and conducts quality assessments of programs.

For example, we track the number of people who participate in our programs, and measure, through participant evaluations, increased awareness of and improved attitudes toward suicide prevention. We evaluate gains in knowledge for participants, and whether they would recommend the program to others. On a select basis we commission and support more focused research evaluation to assess behavior change in addition to attitude and knowledge.

These actions and the data we collect, combined with success stories from our thousands of volunteers across our chapter network, enable us to understand our programs’ reach, effectiveness, and help make real, on-the-ground change possible.