=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3073/paper27
|storemode=property
|title=CIDS: An Ontology for Representing Social and Environmental Impact
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3073/paper26.pdf
|volume=Vol-3073
|authors=Mark Fox,Kate Ruff
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icbo/FoxR21
}}
==CIDS: An Ontology for Representing Social and Environmental Impact==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3073/paper26.pdf
CIDS: An Ontology for Representing Social and Environmental
Impact
Mark S. Fox1 and Kate Ruff2
1
Centre for Social Services Engineering, University of Toronto, 4 St. George St., Toronto ON, M5S 3G8, Canada
2
Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada
Abstract
The Common Impact Data Standard (CIDS) is an ontology designed to represent a Social
Purpose Organization’s (SPO) impact model (i.e., definition) and the impact (i.e., effect) their
implementation has on its stakeholders. It provides a common representation that allows each
SPO to flexibly design an impact model that is most relevant to it, and report on its
performance. CIDS spans the six dimensions of impact: What (Outcome, Impact), Who
(Stakeholders), How (Program, Service, Activity), How Much (i.e., Indicator), Contribution
(i.e., ImpactScale, ImpactDepth, ImpactDuration) and Risk (ImpactRisk). CIDS has been
evaluated by members of the Common Approach project comprised of over 50 SPOs,
grantmakers, etc., and has been implemented in several impact reporting commercial software
tools.
Keywords 1
Social Impact, Ontology, Social Services, Impact Measurement
1. Introduction
In the context of social and environmental impact, the term impact “refers to the intended and
unintended (positive or otherwise) changes (outputs, outcomes) that occur across the organization
(within and/or across its programs) and with its stakeholders (including users, clients, partners, etc.)
over a period of time (short term, long term) as a result of the organization’s activities.”2
Charities, nonprofit and social-purpose businesses – collectively “social purpose organizations”
(SPO) - have long been measuring the impacts of their work on people and the environment. This can
be traced as far back as the late 1800s (Oakes & Young, 2008; Allen 1906) with a marked increase in
measurement since the 1990s (Paton, 2001; Kendall & Knapp, 2000). Throughout this time, there has
been an ongoing tension between those that seek a uniform approach (to enable aggregation and
benchmarking across many organizations) and those who advocate for flexible approaches (which is
more relevant, and therefore useful to the reporting organizations) (Ruff, 2021a; Ruff & Olsen, 2016).
The Common Approach to Impact Measurement3 was created to bridge the tension between uniform
and flexible approaches for social purpose organizations._It is developing a set of flexible standards.
The project has 48 community partners including grantmakers, impact investors, social enterprises,
small charities, and large national charities. It has funding from the Government of Canada and large
private foundations. The Common Impact Data Standard (CIDS) is one of four standards (Fox et al.,
2020). CIDS is a standardized way to represent a SPO’s impact model (i.e., definition) and the impact
(i.e., effect) their implementation has on its stakeholders. This creates a uniform representation while
International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies 2021, September 16–18, 2021, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
EMAIL: msf@eil.utoronto.ca (A. 1); kate.ruff@carleton.ca (A. 2)
ORCID: 0000-0001-7444-6310 (A. 1); 0000-0003-2814-8923 (A. 2)
© 2021 M.S. Fox and K. Ruff
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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https://innoweave.ca/en/modules/impact-measurement
3
https://www.commonapproach.org/
allowing each SPO flexibility to design an impact model that is most relevant to it. The benefits of this
flexible standard are:
1. Better impact: Each organization makes some difference, but their most impactful stories are
when the data can be connected and aggregated. A common impact data standard allows
networks to pool data, to see impact and use the data to improve impact.
2. Sophisticated analysis. CIDS makes it possible for researchers to integrate their data thereby
enabling a plethora of analysis, e.g., longitudinal and transversal studies, using a variety of
methods. This may lead to better understandings of needs, and a better understanding of what
works.
3. More autonomy. Donors, investors, government agencies are increasingly aware that old
impact reporting techniques have been a burden to grantees and investors. A common impact
data model provides funders the standard formats that they need to understand portfolio-level
impacts, while leaving SPOs the autonomy to measure impact in ways that best-fit the SPOs
own data needs.
4. Less paperwork: A common impact data model allows impact data to be represented in ways
that can accommodate the reporting needs of diverse funders. SPOs a common impact data
model will need to do less custom reporting.
5. Greater visibility: Enable the tagging of an organization’s content on the internet making it
easier for search engine users to find impact content on the web.
6. More versatility: A common data model makes it easier for organizations to connect their
impact measurement with other measurement standards, such as the UN SDG Global
Indicator Framework, IRIS+ and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
Standard.
This paper reports on the development, evaluation and deployment of the Common Impact Data
Standard (CIDS). CIDS is an ontology defined using Description Logic and published in OWL4. We
begin with a review of the Impact Management Project5 framework which provides a basis and use case
for the development of CIDS. We then describe some of the ontology patterns contained in CIDS. We
follow this with a description of the various evaluations performed, and its ongoing adoption in the
social impact sector.
2. Modeling Impact: Five Dimensions what, who, how much, contribution,
risk.
Impact measurement experts have developed numerous Impact Models to help social purpose
organizations to articulate the change they seek to achieve and how that change is achieved. These
Impact models include the Logic Model (PCI, 1979), Theory of Change (Weiss, 1997), Outcome Map
(Earl et al., 2001), Outcome Chain (Harries, Hodson & Noble, 2014) and the Impact Map (Nicholls et
al, 2012), among others. While substantively similar, each model represents a particular perspective on
how to model impact (Ruff, 2021b). The similarities mean that it is possible to articulate a common
model that can represent all these impact models thereby allowing the benefits of commonality without
the draw backs of imposing a particular view.
Recently, The Impact Management Project harvested a consensus position of over 2000 practitioners
to define Impact Dimensions. Figure 1 depicts the five types of information about change that are
4
http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/cids/cids.owl
5
https://impactmanagementproject.com/
needed for a robust understanding of
impact plus a sixth dimension, how: An
impact model must state what outcome
has occurred in the period, whether the
outcome positive or negative, and how
important is the outcome to the people; It
is also necessary to know who experiences
the outcome, and how underserved are the
affected stakeholders with respect to the
outcome; how much change (duration,
depth, duration) has been created; how
much of that change is a result of the
reporting organization’s activities; did the
how contribute to the outcome or would it
have likely happened anyways; and what risks are associated with the change if it does not occur as
expected. (The Impact Management Project is for use by all types of organizations, not just social
purpose organizations. It does not include the ‘how’).
Figure 1: Six Dimensions of Impact Measurement
3. Common Impact Data Standard
The Common Impact Data Standard (CIDS) is designed to model a variety of impact models (how)
and the five dimensions of impact (what, who, how much, contribution and risk). Figure 2 depicts many
of the core classes and object properties in the ontology. The classes in yellow are used to define an
organization’s impact model, and the classes in white are used to report on the impact the implemented
model has on its stakeholders.
hasContributingStakeholder
Organization
hasModel Characteristic ImpactScale
hasStakeholder
hasCharacteristic
Impact Model Stakeholder hasScale
hasDepth
hasProgram forStakeholder ImpactReport ImpactDepth
Stakeholder hasImpactReport
Program
Outcome hasDuration
hasService hasStakeholderoutcome ImpactRisk ImpactDuration
hasImpactRisk
hasOutcome
Service Outcome
hasIndicator
canProduce canEnable
act:hasElaboration Indicator
hasInput hasOutput derivedFrom hasIndicatorReport
Input Activity Output
IndicatorReport
Figure 2:Common Impact Data Standard (simplified) Graph
In the remainder of this section we briefly describe a subset of the core ontology patterns. For most
patterns, core classes and object properties are depicted as a graph. Class Description Logic definitions,
plus additional object properties and data properties, can be found in the CIDS specification and
accompanying OWL file. The example used in the section is an SPO named “SfH” that provides skills
training to homeless youth in Toronto.
The following prefixes are used for ontology namespaces:
Prefix URI
act http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/tove/activity#
cids http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/CIDS/cids#
i72 http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/ISO21972/iso21972#
oep http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/part.owl#
owl http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#
rdfs http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
sch http://schema.org/
time https://www.w3.org/2006/time#
xsd http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
3.1. Impact Model Pattern
A Social Purpose Organization (SPO) is represented as an instance of the Organization Class. An
Organization can have one or more Impact Models (Figure 2) whose subclasses include Logic model,
Logical Framework Analysis, Theory of Change, Outcome Chain, Impact Map and Outcomes Map.
The properties of an ImpactModel are defined by the subclass. For example (Figure 3), an
ImpactMeasurement model is defined has having Stakeholders, Outcomes, StakeholderOutcomes,
ImpactReports, Indicators, and IndicatorReports. In our example, SfH would be an instance of
Organization linked to an instance of ImpactMeasurement. Note that the “how” dimension of Program,
Service and Activity is not part of this impact model, though it is part of a logic model. This allows the
five dimensions (what, who, how much, contribution and risk) to be combined with any “how”. The
remainder of the example classes are defined in subsequent subsections.
Organization
forOrganization
hasStakeholder
Stakeholder
ImpactModel
hasOutcome
Outcome
rdfs:subClassOf
Impact hasStakeholderOutcome Stakeholder
LogicModel OutcomeChain
Measurement Outcome
hasImpactReport
ImpactReport
hasIndicator
Indicator
hasIndicatorReport
IndicatorReport
Figure 3: Impact Model Graph
3.2. What: Outcome Pattern
An important component of an impact model is the Outcome it was designed to deliver. The “what”
dimension specifies the outcomes for a selected set of beneficiary stakeholders. It can be used
prospectively for planning, or retrospectively for reporting. It supports the answering of the following
competency questions (we have expressed these as retrospective reporting, but each could be rephrased
as prospective planning questions):
1. What outcome did occur in the period?
2. Is the outcome positive or negative?
3. How important is the outcome to the people (or planet) experiencing it?
While SPOs’ outcomes are necessarily highly specific to their work and context, the work is
undertaken with an eye to bigger and broader goals. For example, SfH might work toward the outcome
“homeless youth become qualified to work in construction industry”, which they measures as “number
of youth (ages 14-25), who were rough sleeping or couch surfing in the preceding 3 months, in
[catchment area], who attained machine operator certificate” This is a component of their funder’s
outcome “increased employability”, which they measure as “number of people in the province with
increased employment skills”. It is also part of a pathway, represented by the canProduce property, to
broader goals such as decreased poverty and increased well-being. These broader goals can be identified
by domain specific standards for both outcomes. For example, the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (UNSDGs) Goal 1 is to “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”. CIDS can
represent both custom and domain specific indicators and illustrates both components and pathways to
allow an analyst to “roll up” from the specific to the more general.
rdfs:subClassOf
Organization Stakeholder
definingOrganization forStakeholder
Outcome Stakeholder
rdfs:subClassOf from
hasDescription:
Code PerspectiveOf
hasDescription:
hasStakeholderOutcome
hasSpecification
xsd:anyURI Activity
rdfs:subClassOf
canEnable
hasIndicator
canProduce
Outcome hasIndicator Indicator
hasDescription:
hasImpactReport
hasImpactReport
ImpactReport
forDomain
Domain
hasImpactRisk
ImpactRisk
Figure 4: Outcome Pattern
Figure 4 depicts the Outcome Pattern. An Outcome defines the intended impact the SPO will have on
stakeholders. SfH’s identifies that its outcome is a component of with UNSDG outcome “8.6 By 2020,
substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training”. Consequently,
SfH’s outcome is linked via definingOrganization to the UN organization, and to the UNSDG outcome
8.6 via hasSpecification – both properties are inherited from Code. The characteristics of the beneficiary
stakeholders are defined in the StakeholderOutcome class. It specifies several properties. First, who the
outcome is for (hasStakeholder), i.e., youth or youth aged 14-25. Second, how important the outcome
is for the stakeholder (e.g., “high importance”, “moderate important”, “neutral”, “unimportant”), from
whose perspective it is important (fromPerspectiveOf). This property is included because increasingly
SPOs are being encouraged to focus budget and reporting on the outcomes that are most important to
those who are affected, rather than those that are most important to funders. Third, if the intended
stakeholder is underserved. This property is used to help distinguish between social-purpose and not
social-purpose businesses6. Fouth, the intended impact. This sets a target against which results can be
compared. As StakeholderOutcome is specialized to a specific Stakeholder, a more specific outcome
and set of indicators can be defined and used to measure the impact (hasIndicator), and the report of
actual impact (hasImpactReport).
3.3. Who: Stakeholder Pattern
The beneficiary of an outcome is a Stakeholder. A Stakeholder is a person or organization. It can be
either a beneficiary of an SPO’s services or a contributor, e.g., goods, funding, expertise. There is a
myriad of characteristics that SPOs might use to identify the beneficiary stakeholder. There are
characteristics that the stakeholder must have (i.e., requirements) to be eligible for their services. There
are also characteristics that the organization might track to learn more about which people are accessing
the product or service. Common stakeholder characteristics are gender, age, race, income, geographic
location, and disability. The specification of stakeholder characteristics is often domain dependent. For
example, in the homeless domain, characteristics such as length (of time) and frequency of
homelessness, and location of homelessness (e.g., street, shelter, friends home) are used to determine
which services are relevant. Secondly, there often does not exist a single set of characteristics for a
domain, but instead alternative sets of characteristics specific to an NGO, government organization,
funder, etc. Competency questions include:
• Who experienced the outcome?
• Are all intended stakeholders benefiting? And benefitting equitably?
• How underserved are the affected stakeholders in the relation to the outcome?
Simply listing a set of properties, the approach taken by vocabularies such as FOAF7 and
Schema.org8, is insufficient for a number of reasons:
1. The possible set of properties associated with a Stakeholder is enormous when taking the
union across domains and sources, leading to an overloading of the concept.
2. The plethora of properties across domains leads to ambiguous and overlapping interpretations.
3. The temporal aspect of a property is ignored, i.e., over what period of time is the property
valid (see Katsumi & Fox (2019) for one possible approach to dealing with this).
4. The causal aspect of a property is ignored, i.e., what led to the Person having the property.
Figure 5 depicts a graph of the Stakeholder pattern.
performs
Organization Person Activity
rdfs:subClassOf I72: definingOrganization
located_in Organization
i72:Feature
OR Code
rdfs:subClassOf
Stakeholder hasSpecification xsd:anyURI
hasCharacteristic
Characteristic
time: Time:
rdfs:subClassOf hasTime DateTimeInterval
prov:
Contributing Beneficiary wasGeneratedBy
oep:
Stakeholder Stakeholder partOf Activity
ImpactModel
Figure 5: Stakeholder Pattern
Stakeholder is a subclass of Person or Organization. The most important information about a
stakeholder is their characteristics. In our example where the stakeholder is a youth, hasCharacteristic
6
The Impact Management Project refers to this as “C-Class” where C is for Contributing to solutions. More information available at
https://impactmanagementproject.com/investor-impact-matrix/
7
http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/
8
https://schema.org/
would link to an instance of Characteristic that would specify the age range of the person. Other
characteristics, such as type of homelessness, whether indigenous, etc., would also be specified by
separate instances of Characteristic. Characteristic extends the Code class enabling the reuse of
characteristics defined by other organizations.
3.4. How Much and Contribution: ImpactReport, Indicator, Counterfactual
The How Much and Contribution dimensions address the competency questions:
• How much of the outcome is occurring – across scale, depth and duration?
• Would this change likely have happened anyway?
How Much measures the degree of impact an SPO has on its stakeholders. Contribution compares the
degree of impact against a baseline, represented as a Counterfactual. While the previous dimensions are
used to both define an SPO’s impact model and reported impact, these two dimensions are used only to
report on the results of applying the impact model to stakeholders.
Figure 6 depicts the Impact Report Pattern. There are three core classes: ImpactReport which
records the impact the service has on stakeholders, Indicator which is used to measure the impact, and
Counterfactual which is used to measure stakeholder impact in the absence of the service being
provided. The ImpactReport records three types of impact in the following classes:
1. ImpactScale: measures the number of individuals who are affected by the SPO’s outcome.
2. ImpactDepth: measures the degree of change experienced by the stakeholders compared to
some baseline determined prior to the service being provided.
3. ImpactDuration: measures how long the stakeholder experiences the outcome.
prov:wasGeneratedBy
ImpactScale
Stakeholder hasScale hasCounterfactual
CounterFactual
hasDepth
forStakeholder ImpactReport ImpactDepth
Stakeholder hasImpactReport i72:located_in
Outcome hasDuration i72:Feature
hasStakeholderoutcome ImpactDuration
i72:for_time_interval time:
Outcome
DateTimeInterval
hasIndicator
canProduce forIndicator
Indicator Survey or Interview
prov:wasGeneratedBy
or Estimate or
Computation
hasOutput derivedFrom
Activity Output
i72:value
i72:Measure
Figure 6: Impact Report Pattern
ImpactReport reports on the effects on stakeholders experiencing a service provided by an SPO. In this
case, it would report impact scale, depth and duration separately, where each includes the properties:
hasIndicator: links to the Indicator used to measure the impact; prov:wasGeneratedBy: links to the
activity that generated the impact value if an indicator is not specified; and hasCounterfactual: links
to a Counterfactual which can be used to calculate what the impact on stakeholders would be if the
stakeholders did not receive the service. The Counterfactual class specifies the spatial area over which
the counterfactual was measured, the time interval, method of measurement and the value of the
measurement.
In order to measure how much, a SPO specifies Indicators for each Outcome and
StakeholderOutcome, that measure overall impact and stakeholder specific impact, respectively. The
indicator for our example is “average number of skills each homeless youth attains.” CIDS provides an
indicator pattern for defining indicators based on the Global City Indicator Foundation Ontology (Fox,
2013; 2015)9, which has been published as ISO/IEC technical standard 21972:2020. Figure 7 depicts a
difference indicator pattern which is defined as having a taking the difference of two terms, each
measuring a statistic (in the case size) of a Population. Membership in a population is defined by a class
(Fox, 2018). In this example, the indicator takes the difference between the mean number of skills
homeless youth have before and after participating in the SfH’s service.
i72: i72:
Indicator Difference_Quantity
Average number of
skills each homeless
youth gained
i72:term_1 i72:term_2
Average number of Average number of
i72: i72:
skills each homeless skills each homeless
Mean Mean
youth post intervention youth pre intervention
i72:mean_of i72:parameter_of_var i72:mean_of
i72: Homeless youth Group Homeless youth Group i72:
hasSkills
Population - post intervention - pre intervention Population
i72:defined_by i72:defined_by
Person Person
hasSkills: Homeless youth @ t2 Homeless youth @ t1 hasSkills:
hasAge: hasAge:
Figure 7: Difference Indicator Pattern
3.5. Risk: Risk Pattern
Another component of Outcome is a set of Impact Risks. ImpactRisk “assesses the likelihood that
impact will be different than expected, and that the difference will be material from the perspective of
people or the planet who experience impact.” ImpactRisk has nine subclasses that identify different
types of risk10 each identified as “lowRisk”, “mediumRisk”, “highRisk”; hasConsequence, which
identifies the degree of impact the risk could have on the stakeholders and hasMitigation, which is string
that specifies a mitigation plan or references a document. This risk pattern is useful when interpreting
data. It provides insights into why reported impact (the depth, duration and scale) might be less than
expected. It provides insights when comparing the impacts of two SPOs by identifying if the outcomes
are similarly risky.
3.6. How: Program, Service and Activity Pattern
The program/service pattern, depicted in Figure 2, is motivated by the Canadian Government
Reference Model (CGRM) (Wiseman, 2015): A program defines a set of services that focus on a shared
set of Outcomes. For example, a “poverty reduction program” can be made up of a set of Services such
as mobiles services that provides food and clothing to those that live on the street, and a training service
that provides basic skills for those living on the street. A Program has the following object properties:
hasService which identifies the Services that make up the Program; hasOutcome which identifies the
Outcomes that the program is to achieve; hasContributingStakeholder which identifies the stakeholders
that contribute to the Program; hasBeneficialStakeholder which identifies the stakeholders that benefit
from the Program; hasInput which identifies the Inputs to the Program; and hasOutput: which identifies
the Outputs of the Program.
9
http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/GCI/Foundation/GCI-Foundation-v2.owl
10
See: https://impactmanagementproject.com/impact-management/impact-management-norms/risk/
A Program has one or more Services which specify the activities that deliver the service. A Service
has the following properties: act:hasSubActivity which identifies the Activities that make that comprise
the Service; hasInput which identifies the Inputs to the Service; hasOutput which identifies the Outputs
of the Service; hasOutcome which identifies the Outcomes that are specific to the Service;
hasContributingStakeholder which identifies the stakeholders that contribute to the Service;
hasBeneficialStakeholder which identifies the stakeholders that benefit from the Service;
beneficiarySizeStart: which identifies the number of beneficial stakeholders at the beginning of the
service time interval; beneficiarySizeEnd which identifies the number of beneficial stakeholders at the
end of the service time interval; and i72:for_time_interval which is the time interval over which the
service is provided. The representation of Activities is based on the TOVE Enterprise Ontology (Fox,
1992; Fox & Gruninger, 1998), including its Activity Ontology (Fox, Chionglo & Fadel, 1993), revised
in (Katsumi & Fox, 2017). This information is important for questions of replication and learning what
works. Some SPOs may wish to replicate the work of high-impact programs. This pattern explains
“how” the impact was achieved. The pattern can also be used by managers of SPOs to inform
innovations and trials. The program can be implemented differently in different geographies, time
periods or for different stakeholders. A SPO manager can learn how to achieve greater impact by linking
different Program, Service and Activity patters with the associated outcomes.
4. Evaluation
The Common Impact Data Standard has been evaluated through expert consultation and two stages
of validation.
Expert consultations were initiated at the outset of the project and remain ongoing. At key points in
development subject area experts were invited to participate in weekly or monthly meetings to advise
the development of a particular portion of the Common Impact Data Standard. In total, five subject area
experts were involved. They have contributed expertise in impact measurement standards, indicator
standards, charity evaluation, and impact measurement software. In addition, five presentations to
Common Approach partners solicited feedback from potential users including grantmakers, impact
investors, software providers, impact measurement consultants, and SPOs. Finally, two public events
brought forward input from broad range of subject area experts. There was a public webinar (70
attended) hosted by the Common Approach and a presentation at Good Tech Fest (May 2020). The in-
depth work with experts produced many revisions to CIDS v1 and v1.1. The user feedback and broader
expert consultations reinforced both need and usefulness of such a standard, and the importance of using
impact measurement software as an interface between the Common Impact Data Standard and those
who that might use it. The ontology is too technical for the SPOs and their funders.
CIDS v1.1 has been through two stages of validation. The first stage sought to validate the flexibility
of CIDS v1.1. We tested if CIDS v1.1 could be used to represent different accounts of impact. The
research team built a sample of SPOs from our prior research for which we had impact data. From this
sample, we selected one SPO that used a Logic Model and one that used an Outcomes Chain. We then
represented each Impact Model using CIDS v1.1. The test demonstrates that CIDS V1.1 successfully
represents both the Logic Model (Figure 8) and the Outcome Chain (Figure 9). These figures depict
only a portion of the graphs.
The second stage sought to validate the completeness of CIDS v1.1. We tested if CIDS v1.1 could
represent the entirety of an SPO impact report. From May-July 2021, we conducted a qualitative content
analysis on the impact reports of 8 SPOs. (full details of method forthcoming). Each impact report was
imported in NVivo coded in three broad categories. The code “CIDSV1.1” (which included a subcode
for each class and property) as used to identify impact data in the report that could be represented by
CIDS V1.1. The code “CIDS2” was used to identify impact data in the report that could not be
represented by CIDS V1.1. The Code “Other” was used to identify report content that did not pertain
to impact (subcodes include, repetition, heading, navigation, supplemental). A research assistant coded
every word in each report. Results of the preliminary analysis show that CIDS V1.1 is able to represent
most all of the impact of these organization (725 instances), however there are impact areas not
supported by CIDS V1.1 that will be added to CIDS2. These include a representation of the need the
SPO addresses (21 instances) and examples of impact, such as testimonials and stories that illustrate an
outcome (50 instances).
Organization
veahavta
hasModel
hasStakeholder
Logic Model Stakeholder
“Vehavta logic model”
hasProgram forStakeholder
Program
“Work & Life Skills Training Impact
Program”
hasService
hasImpact
hasOutcome
Service Outcome hasIndicator Indicator
“Enrollment in further “Education Program
“Ve’ahavta Street Academy”
education” Enrollment”
act:hasElaboration hasIndicatorReport
derivedFrom
Output
Input hasInput hasOutput “planned and actual IndicatorReport
“Clients who experience Activity number of graduating of
homelessness” “VSA delivery activity”
clients of the VSA training vsa-edu-ind-rep1
program”
Figure 8: Logic Model for Ve'ahavta
Organization
“Our House”
Activity canProduce Outcome
“Tenants learn to
hasModel “Act as a good landlord”
become good tenants”
OutcomeChain canProduce
“Our House outcome
chain model”
hasService
Activity canProduce Outcome canProduce Outcome canProduce Outcome
“Build practical skills and “Tenants take “Stable and safe “Tenants have a better
Service knowledge” responsibility” housing” quality of life”
“Provide a choice of safe
and affordable housing”
hasIndicator
hasOutome canProduce
canEnable
Outcome Activity canProduce Outcome Indicator
“Tenants have “Provide opportunities to “Tenants become good “Average duration at
accommodation that develop relationships” neighbours” each housing”
they want”
Figure 9: Our House Outcome Chain
5. Deployment
The Common Impact Data Standard is used by impact management and grant management software.
We call this alignment. There are three levels of alignment: Basic, Essential and Full. A detailed
statement of the alignment criteria are available online. Three software vendors have aligned or have
signed a document committing them to align.
• Sametrica11 has committed to a timeline align at the full tier. Sametrica has implemented
most of the classes and properties.
• RIDDL12 has committed to a timeline to align at the Essential tier. Many classes and
properties are already implemented.
• Helpseeker13 is incorporating CIDS as part of its Compass social services sector platform
data model. The Compass project is funded by the Canada’s Digital Technology
Supercluster.
11
https://sametri.ca/
12
https://riddl.ca/
13
https://helpseeker.org/
The Common Impact Data Standard is also be used by social purpose organization, grantmakers and
investors. We call this adoption14. One way that SPOs adopt is by using an aligned software. There are
over 200 SPOs using the data standard through the aligned software. Another way that SPOs adopt is
by creating their own databases using the properties and classes in CIDS. For example, an impact
investor has used The Common Impact Data Standard to build a knowledge graph of their portfolio of
investments. The knowledge graph, supported by the Common Impact Data Standard, allows a
representation of the impact investor’s impact portfolio that would not be possible15 using traditional
impact reporting practices (pdfs and excel sheets).
6. Conclusion
Just as the development of the SCOR reference model for Supply Chain Management (Stewart,
1997) has been transformational to the supply chain industry, the development of an ontology for impact
modelling has the potential to be transformational to the Environment, Social and Governance sectors.
The nature in which it is transformational is manifold:
1. It provides structure for how to think about modeling and measuring impact, e.g., making
explicit both the expected outcomes, risks and how their achievement is to be measured, an
area that has been historically qualitative;
2. It provides precise definitions of terminology thereby reducing the ambiguity of interpretation,
and supporting the emergence of domain specific standards;
3. It fosters interoperability, i.e., the ability to understand and merge information available from
datasets spread across social purpose organizations, their networks and their investors and
grantmakers;
4. It makes possible the benchmarking of SPO performance, thereby making it possible to
identify best practices and for SPOs to learn from each other;
5. It makes it possible for grantmakers to aggregate data across portfolios of investments; and
6. It makes the components of impact interpretable by a computer so that open source software
and other technologies developed for big data can be applied to analyze and interpret the data
collected and generated by social purpose organizations, including automating the detection of
inconsistencies in data, as well as the causes of the observed variations.
Work continues on the development of the next version of CIDS, in particular an ontology of
stakeholder needs. Secondly a repository is being developed to support sector wide analysis.
7. Acknowledgements
This research was supported, in part, by the and the Ministry of Employment and Social
Development Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Growth, and the Natural
Science and Engineering Research Council Canada. We wish to thank the contributions made by Tawfiq
Abdulai, Anshula Chowdhury, Bart Gajderowicz, James Hicks, Daniela Rosu and Jane Zhang to the
design of CIDS.
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