ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the typology of practices of impact measurement, with the objective to differentiate between charities that merely use it symbolically and those that have actively adopted it to develop, adjust and refine a strategy to reach long-term objective. The wide adoption of impact measurement practices in the charity sector is thus by no means is an indicator of their strategic value. The instrument that can be used for strategic planning and monitoring of development projects, divides the results of an intervention into short-, medium- and long-term results. However, institutional theory tells us that external pressure can force institutions to adopt policies that are necessarily in their best strategic interests. The idea of impact as a long-term result has its roots in programme planning and design. The appearance of the Logical Framework Approach or Logframes in the development sector in 1969 by USAID meant the start of the wide usage of logic models in the development sector.
