Nonprofits, let Sunday Suppers be your outcomes-tracking role model

“Around the Corner” is a PhillyCAM show that offers local social impact leaders the opportunity to share what impact their work is having on the Philadelphia area. 

Nonprofits: If you want to prove your programs’ effectiveness, you need to track its outcomes.

It’s something Sunday Suppers founder and director Linda Samost knows well.

Sunday Suppers is a food access nonprofit that teaches low-income families in the Kensington area how to cook healthy meals.

“It’s really important that healthy and accessible food is in neighborhoods,” Samost said in her “Around the Corner” interview with Generocity Editor Julie Zeglen. “But that in and of itself is really not going to make a difference. People need to feel comfortable. They need the education and the skills in order to be able to take that head of broccoli home and make it. We provide those skills.”

Samost has tracked how well Sunday Suppers meets its goals in increasing healthy habits with pre- and post-program surveys distributed to participants. So far, it’s met them well.

For instance, in eight months, she found that participants went from drinking sugary beverages about 66 percent of the time to 34 percent. In the long run, that could be huge for a family’s well-being.

Learn more about Sunday Suppers below.

PhillyCAM is Comcast channel 66/966 HD/967 and Verizon FIOS channel 29/30 in Philadelphia.