Vera Solutions hosted our fifth (and largest) virtual Amp Impact Summit in December. Clients, partners, and Verites from across the global Amp Impact community gathered to exchange best practices, collaborate on the Amp Impact roadmap, and continue to lead the way in advancing accountability and data management in the social sector.
Since being launched on the Salesforce AppExchange in 2017, Amp Impact’s footprint has grown markedly over the last five years. Amp Impact is now being used by more than 80 organizations globally to manage over $8.5 billion in programs and grants, currently with more than 7,300 monthly active users.
Essential to Amp Impact’s growth is its Partner Program, with top Salesforce consulting partners delivering Amp Impact solutions for NGOs, grantmakers, governments, and multilateral organizations worldwide to help them better manage their programs and drive accountability with their stakeholders. Vera marked the one-year anniversary of its partner program in October, and since then, we’ve worked on projects both with newer 2022 partners—such as Fluido and Waeg—and more seasoned ones such as G-Company and Attain Partners. The Amp Impact Partner Program currently has 15 implementing partners, and this month marks the product’s 18th release.
Through the Summit, members of the global community engaged and shared collective feedback on how to continually strengthen the product for the years ahead.
Learn how Amp Impact – a 100% native Salesforce app – provides a single source of truth for portfolio and impact data.
A Kickoff to the Summit: A few reflections for World AIDS Day and the Power of Data
Vera Co-founder and CEO, Zak Kaufman, kicked off the summit, which took place on World AIDS Day, by reflecting on the HIV pandemic and his experience as an epidemiologist working on the front lines of HIV prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa.
"The HIV pandemic provides an important and interesting case study on the power of data and an opportunity to reflect on the collective work that we're all doing around the sector. It's an opportunity to reflect on the sheer magnitude of the global challenges we're all working to address - the impact of poverty, hunger, and climate change, at the individual, community, and global-level. It’s also a reflection on the incredible progress humanity is capable of with sustained effort over a few decades. And lastly it’s an opportunity to reflect on the power of data to accelerate that progress…The power of data to mobilize resources, to recognize opportunities for improvement, to democratize information, and to optimize programs.”
A few words from Salesforce.org
Salesforce.org Vice President of Industry Advisors for EMEA, Cyril Treacy, reflected on the challenges nonprofits encounter when measuring and tracking their impact. He also shared how Amp Impact serves as a single source of truth for impact measurement, informing funders and donors about the impact of their grants and how it ultimately contributes to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Client Spotlights
Attendees heard from three trailblazing nonprofits–American Red Cross, Plan International, and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation–on their experiences implementing and using Amp Impact to manage program and impact data.
"One of the factors that came into play in the products we started to find, and Amp Impact being the one we chose, was scalability across other lines of business for American Red Cross".
American Red Cross entered the design phase after a preliminary exploration and design phase with Vera Solutions, where Vera hosted design workshops with business teams and focused on user stories and overall solution design.
The system is expected to launch in summer 2023, following an agile methodology of three ‘build’ sprints, testing, data migration, training, and change management activities.
"The relationship we have with Vera is just really amazing and we're having just a fabulous time with Vera. I think the ability to build that relationship with a vendor and enjoy what we're doing - we're doing work that makes us get up in the morning".
2. Amp Impact for Monitoring and Evaluation with Plan International
Plan International has been working with Amp Impact since 2020, calling their system PMERL (Project Management, Monitoring Evaluation Research and Learning).
The organization needed a way to organize project and impact data across the various programmatic areas they work in. As a result, they developed what they call their AOGD (Areas of Global Distinctiveness) framework, which focuses on specific programs and focus areas. They consolidated a sizable catalog of outcomes, outputs, and indicators, which country offices use in their projects and logframes.
Gathering reports and dashboards for country office management and global program management through Amp Impact, PMERL functions as a single source of truth across the organization. By July 2021, Plan International had 59 country offices and regional hubs, which together had over 2000 users, active on the PMERL system.
"For Plan staff, [Amp Impact] is a game-changer. This did not exist before and it comes with great success".
3. Amp Impact for Grants Monitoring and Evaluation with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
One of Amp Impact’s earliest adopters, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) has been using Amp Impact to track outcomes across hundreds of grants in India, South Africa, and the US since 2017. Prior to implementing Amp Impact, the foundation lacked a central view of its outcomes.
"When we implemented Amp Impact, it was the first time in the foundation's history that we were moving from thinking about what works on the grant level to defining a measurement and evaluation strategy that informs the foundation's strategy at large".
Today, Amp Impact forms an important part of the organization’s technology framework. Every project originates in a homegrown GMS system, from which active project data flows to Amp Impact on Salesforce. Amp Impact serves as the source of truth for indicator and result data, with grantees capturing progress reports in a portal built on Salesforce Experience Cloud. MSDF feeds all outcome data into a datamart on SQL server, from which reports and dashboards run using Tableau.
Since 2017, MSDF has tracked outcomes for 578 projects, 2,126 reporting periods, and 420+ standard indicators contributing to 85 organizational objectives.
Amp Impact Roadmap Highlights: Indus Sneak Peek
Vera remains committed to continually improving Amp Impact with our global community to meet evolving needs. In a session focused on the Amp Impact roadmap, Vera Senior Product Manager, Gabi Espinoza, led a live demo preview of the soon-to-launch Amp Impact Indus Release and shared the latest plans for upcoming releases.
Participants then joined breakout sessions facilitated by members of the Vera Product team. Breakout groups delved into key focus areas on the Amp roadmap–data aggregation, data sharing and publishing, workplanning, and visualization–to inform design of new features and enhancements.
Peer Learning breakout sessions
The Summit continued two rounds of Peer Learning breakout sessions. Participants joined sessions facilitated by experts from Vera and partners.
In breakout groups, participants discussed eight topics:
1. Rollout and Initial Change Management
2. Amp Impact and Monitoring and Evaluation
3. Building a Data Driven Culture
4. Amp Impact and Grants Management
5. Amp Impact Project/Program Management
6. Analytics and Data Visualization
7. Impact Data Sharing and Publishing
8. Evolution of Monitoring Evaluation Strategies
For key takeaways from the peer learning sessions, please contact
Thanks and Acknowledgements
"Thank you so much for organizing this event, Vera team! I am excited for the peer learning group and staying in touch with other Amp users".
A special thank you to our amazing Partners, to Salesforce.org, and to our clients for joining the Summit. Special thanks to American Red Cross, Plan International, and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation for sharing their journeys with the global community. Look out for upcoming opportunities to connect, learn, and collaborate as we plan more regular community engagements in 2023 for Amp Impact customers and partners.
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About Amp Impact
Amp Impact is a Salesforce-based solution for portfolio management and impact measurement. Built on common needs observed during hundreds of digital transformation projects, Amp Impact enables NGOs, grantmakers, and multilateral organizations to trade in complex spreadsheets for a flexible, friendly, and integrated technology solution. Amp Impact helps organizations streamline workflow and data flow across offices and geographies. Amp Impact is now used in more than 150+ countries to manage data for over $8.5 billion in development programs and grants.
