Every report contains a claim bigger than the proof behind it. Minimum Viable Evidence is a working standard for closing that gap: the simplest proof that would satisfy an honest, skeptical funder, not a journal, collected with the resources an organization already has.
Why most small organizations give up on measurement
Small organizations often kill their own measurement ambitions with a single false belief, that evidence only counts if it looks academic. They picture control groups, baseline studies, and budgets they will never have, so they do nothing and default back to counting attendance.
Through Impactedia, I have sat with three-person teams who assumed real evidence was out of reach for them. It rarely is. The standard is not perfection. It is proportion.
Who this is for, and how long it takes
About 20 minutes. For a founder, director, or program lead who reports activity numbers today and wants to know, honestly, whether the underlying claim would survive a skeptic asking questions.
What’s inside
- The three rules: proportionate not perfect, built into the program not bolted on, negative space stays in the picture.
- A four-row planning table: claimed outcome, proportionate proof, and where it gets collected.
- A field for naming the negative space, the dropouts and non-responses most reports quietly omit.
How to get the most out of it
Start from what you are already claiming, not a hypothetical program. If you cannot name your current claim in one line, that gap is the more urgent finding. Match the evidence to the size of the claim rather than reaching for a bigger study than the claim needs.
What changes if you actually do this
The output is a short table naming proof instead of activity. The outcome is evidence that lives inside the program, intake, exit, follow-up, instead of a special project once a year. The impact is a report that survives a fair skeptic’s questions, and a smaller number you can actually stand behind.
Download Minimum Viable Evidence
Next step: if you want the diagnostic version of this discipline applied to your whole system, The Ten-Minute Self-Test surfaces which trap is quietly running the show.
FAQ
What if we truly have no resources to collect evidence?
The rule is proportionate, not resourced like a research institute. A spreadsheet, a phone, and a quarterly follow-up call is enough for most claims a small organization actually makes.
Why include evidence that makes us look worse?
Evidence with no failures in it does not read as evidence, it reads as advertising. An honest small number, negative space included, is easier to defend and build on than an inflated one.
Is this only for nonprofits and NGOs?
No. Any organization or individual making a change claim, a program, a service, a personal project, can use the same standard: proportionate proof, collected where the work already happens.
