Measuring Wellbeing Course
Rethinking charity impact: measure wellbeing, not just outcomes
A short online course from the Happier Lives Institute on using WELLBYsWellbeing-Adjusted Life Years. One WELLBY is equivalent to a 1-point increase on a 0-10 wellbeing scale for one year. Read more to measure the impact of your work on people’s wellbeing.
A recognised credential with the Bloom Wellbeing Fund and the Mental Health Funding Circle.
Why take this course?
If you’re here, you already understand that wellbeing is important. To improve it, we must be able to measure it. Through bite-sized videos and a structured learning pathway, you’ll gain the skills to implement evidence-based approaches to measuring wellbeing in your organisation.
Who it’s for
- NGO leaders and practitionersOptimise your impact measurement.
- Charity evaluators and researchersGain expertise in cost-effectiveness analysis.
- Philanthropists and fundersLearn how to assess donations for maximum impact.
What you get
- Understand and improve the impact your work has on wellbeing
- Improve your charity’s cost-effectiveness and evaluation methods
- Deepen your knowledge and understanding of wellbeing
- Gain credibility in wellbeing impact measurement
- Fast-track funding evaluations with improved knowledge
- Join an exclusive Slack community of certified professionals
- Get a certificate to showcase your expertise
The course
- Watch the video
- Take the quiz
- Tell us what you think
- Pass all six quizzes and we’ll email you your certificate
Why measure wellbeing?
Why is measuring wellbeing the way to measure what really matters?
This video introduces the importance of measuring impact effectively in charities, challenging traditional evaluation methods and making the case for wellbeing as the ultimate measure of success.
An introduction to the WELLBY
Can we really measure wellbeing?
Yes! This video explains how and introduces the WELLBY (Wellbeing-Adjusted Life Year). Gross domestic product (GDP) may have become the dominant metric but this is a way to track and compare the impact of different interventions on overall life satisfaction.
Are wellbeing measures reliable?
Can we trust subjective wellbeing data?
This video explains why we can trust people’s self-reported data. We explore some other areas where we already rely on self-reported data, concerns about intercultural comparability, and linearity.
Common WELLBY questions
How do you value saving lives vs improving them? What about QALYs? Shouldn’t we just give people money?
This video answers some FAQs about wellbeing. Hopefully this will answer some questions which have popped up for you so far, and give you the confidence to talk about wellbeing with donors and stakeholders.
Calculating cost-effectiveness
What is cost-effectiveness and how do we use WELLBYs to calculate it?
This video explains how much happiness impact a charity creates per dollar spent and why this matters. We focus on impact, considering issues like evidence quality, spillover effects and adjustments.
Implementing the WELLBY
What should we do next?
This video shares ideas about what you can do to implement WELLBYs in your organisation. We use WELLBYs as part of our work in recommending charities. There are so many more potential uses – HLI would love to work with you and collaborate to maximise happiness!