Today’s Good News: Performance Measurement Growing At Nonprofits
I spent many years in the corporate world before getting involved in political advocacy. I’m used to organizations that know what they want and know how to get it (as Sid Vicious would say). So it’s been a shock for me to observe that the norm at nonprofits seems to be to avoid setting goals, and if any should be set, to assiduously avoid measuring performance against those goals. I was excited to read in the WSJ that there’s real progress being made on this front.
A story on Dec. 20 (if you have an online sub, you can read it here ) highlights a number of services for donors who want evidence that their money is having an impact.
Nonprofit workers and managers well know that donors have always compared “charities” on certain financial measures, such as how much an organization spends on “administrative” costs. This has led to an emphasis on funding short-term projects, rather than staff or infrastructure, that cripples organizations’ ability to fund operations and full-time staff to carry on work over a long term. The Journal notes that givers, “especially younger, more business-minded ones,” want to know more about how successful an organization’s programs are in having a real impact on their issues. Can you say “results”?
Nonprofits historically haven’t devoted resources to measuring results. One board member says that “fear of finding out something’s not working,” more than the time and money involved, keeps organizations from investing in research into what works. Just as in business, there’s often also internal politics behind the reluctance.
The article highlights five services that help measure success. They also suggest asking organizations that one is considering for support about their goals and strategies, and how they measure their own impact. Some foundations, like the Annie E. Casey Foundation, put a premium on effectiveness in their own grant procedures. The five are:
- Center for High Impact Philanthropy
- The Center For What Works
- Community Foundations
- Evidencebasedprograms.org
- GiveWell
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