b.world's latest release offers the freedom and flexibility you need to share the right impact story with the right audience at the right time.
We understand you are under a lot of pressure to achieve results, and that you don't have the time or resources to "pull it all together on a moment's notice" from spreadsheets or chase the people who have the knowledge. That's why we've made it easier than ever for you to create and share your impact story by combining narrative, quantifiable results, and visuals with just a few clicks. Read on to learn how b.world helps you, your team, and your partners measure impact, visualize results, and share your impact story.
Create Global Stories
Just like b.world Results enables aggregating indicator data from across projects, b.world Global Stories makes it easy to compose an impact story with drag-and-drop content from all of your projects. All you have to do is:
Click the Stories section from the main navigation on the left side of the screen
Click the ‘+’ to create a new story.
Choose a story type.
Drag-and-drop narrative, images, video, and charts into the story canvas...
And last, publish your impact story!
This new impact storytelling capability is designed to enable you to share your impact in minutes, regardless of whether you have a dedicated marketing and communications team. It's perfect for nonprofits that need case studies to support new funding pursuits, CSR and ESG teams that need to showcase their organization's impact, and social impact consultancies that want to share a portfolio of their work with prospective clients.
Add Results Charts to Stories
Results matter! That's why we've made it even easier to add your aggregate Results to b.world stories in projects and globally across the app. At the project level, you can include aggregated indicator data to a project-focused story; at the global level, well, you can include data from any indicator on any project or any aggregate result from your b.world team! This means that Communications teams and other storytellers will have all the content they need at their fingertips to compose and share any story about any work their organization has done, is doing, or plans to initiate. Global Stories combined with the ability to include aggregate Results in any story truly maximizes the power of having data and stories in the same digital platform.
Add Narrative Insights to Results
In our last release, we introduced the ability to add Insights to many places in b.world. Think of Insights as notes or annotations written in a notebook or on sticky notes which add context and detail to your work. Maybe you want to theorize about an unexpected trend you saw in your data or note a poignant quote from a program participant that corroborates your team's learning during implementation. However, it’s a letdown when you need those notes, but your notebook is somewhere on your desk somewhere under a pile of papers! With b.world Insights, you can easily document all “sidebar” notes where they make sense and easily find them when you need them—to share in a meeting, to inspire additional thoughts or to include in an impact story. You can now add Results charts AND corresponding Insights to any story in your b.world team. If this doesn’t help bridge the gap between the M&E and Communications teams in your organization, we’re not sure what will!
Results Charts Enhancements
Charts in the Results feature now include all the configurations you know and love elsewhere in the application. From being able to hide/show data values on the chart to changing chart titles and labels to being able to download images of the aggregate results, it’s all there! This continuity across the application is meant to create an optimal and streamlined user experience as you work from bottom to top—from structuring your projects, to entering data, to analyzing and aggregating results.
One of our favorite new features is b.world's Trend Comparison chart! It makes it easy for you to easily visualize and compare results from multiple indicators in the same chart with the click of a button.
What’s next: We are looking to take Results to the next level in a couple different and compelling ways:
Aggregating disaggregate values across indicators: This feature will enable auto-calculating things like the TOTAL number of women supported, or the TOTAL number of people served in a specific location. Donors often seek this type of information and b.world is here to help; the application will make it easy not only to calculate these numbers, but also to include their corresponding graphs and narrative in impact stories.
Trend Comparison statistical analysis: We plan to enhance Trend Comparison by providing statistical analysis for indicator comparison. This will support a more precise understanding of cause and effect; for example, if we hypothesize that increasing the number of math courses will increase students’ test scores on standardized math tests, we could use b.world’s Trend Comparison feature to see if our hypothesis is supported or not. Moreover, this type of analysis combined with introducing disaggregates into Results will enable comparing control and experimental disaggregate groups within a single indicator.
Bug Fixes and Minor UI Improvements
Log In: We streamlined the registration process to make it easier for new users to join b.world.
Projects - Logframe: We enhanced the logframe in the following ways:
Stakeholders weren’t saving on activity indicators if they were added after the initial indicator setup. This issue has been fixed.
The values on the x-axis are now rendering properly for indicators with weekly reporting frequency.
Reporting frequency for indicators sometimes automatically changed, but shouldn’t have. This no longer occurs.
Stacking disaggregates is no longer an option for line graphs, as it didn’t make sense visually.
Help text language for Target and Baseline is now more appropriate.
The Icon representing “indicator” has been updated across the platform.
Insights: Insights can now be edited so you can add to and modify narratives across the app.
Project Elements: Disaggregates are now alphabetized by default within each dimension, making it easier to find the right data.
As always, please continue to share your feedback and let us know what you love or if anything is not functioning as expected in the platform. If you're new to b.world, check out a video overview of the platform and then sign up for a free 30-day trial here! Thank you for your ongoing involvement and insight as we strive to design and build the best b.world we can for you and your social impact colleagues around the world.
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