Linking outcomes to aims

Defining your expected outcomes is part of good project planning. Planned outcomes are linked to your aims, so defining clear aims will help you identify your outcomes.

The importance of this approach is explained by the director of The Passage Day Centre:

"You can't even begin with outcomes until you sort out your mission statement and aims. A mistake people make is to think that outcomes are something that you bolt on to the organisation so that you can satisfy the external world. That is so wrong. They have to arise from your service to be meaningful."

Objectives

Objectives describe what you and the other staff in your organisation will do to help bring about the specific aims, which in turn contribute to achieving the overall aim. Objectives are the services or products you plan to offer. Aims and objectives are always linked, but are often confused. They are, however, quite distinct:

• Aims are the changes you hope to achieve as a result of your work.
  
• Objectives are the activities you undertake and the services you offer to bring those changes about.

The triangle below is a simple but highly effective way to present the aims and objectives of your organisation. Charities Evaluation Service has used it successfully within training and consultancy over many years to clarify what organisations are trying to do.

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Overall aim - The overall aim is like a mission statement. It tells everyone why your organisation exists and the broad effect it wants to have. It summarises the difference that your organisation wants to make for a specific target group.

Specific aims are single statements about the differences an organisation hopes to make, often in the individuals it works with. There will usually be several specific aims.

Using the outcomes triangle

Authors: Sara Burns, Sally Cupitt
Copyright: Charities Evaluation Service