News & Views

You raise a lot of interesting and even valid points, but to what end? Are you critiquing evaluation? Are you against nonprofits operating at the margins of capitalism? Are you advocating for better metrics? You teased with an interesting title, raised
some points and went.... nowhere. I'm left with one question: So what?

Patrick, thanks so much for your comment. Many nonprofit providers have experienced evaluation protocols from funders that don't really make sense as evaluative tools for their program. It can be difficult, from the perspective of a single nonprofit, to
understand why so many of the evaluation protocols don't seem well suited to measuring valuable impacts. As someone who's been both a funder concerned with building effective evaluation strategies, and a nonprofit executive responding to requests for data
from stakeholders, I'm pointing out most evaluative frameworks themselves are compromised by an unacknowledged truism: noisy systems can only be made less noisy with large amounts of resource. Whether that resource is money or labor, if you don't spend it,
you won't fix it. Given the fragmented nature of our nonprofit ecosystem (operating on the margins of capitalism as it does), I don't think we'll see big investments in money. So that leaves us with labor: the marginally compensated labor that nonprofit leaders
and workers spend trying to move beyond their day to day work into creating more efficient labor. As funders and as nonprofit leaders, we need to make more room for this to happen - it's the better strategy given the nature of the challenges we face as a sector.
We can argue that the system itself must change to better value work that does not generate wealth, and instead returns social benefits (of course I would agree with this). But all that argument won't alter the fact that, in the here and now, our best option
is to shepherd and support our labor of leadership. Take care, Mike

Terrific post. There's a measurement problem here: nonprofits struggle to show their impact exceeds their costs. Given 9% of all wages go to the nonprofit sector but only contribute 5.4% of GDP means two things. First, the nonprofit sector is under-tooled
and, second,GDP is an incomplete measure and/or nonprofits are not measuring or demonstrating their broader impact. ImpactMap (take a free 60-day trial)is a tool that helps nonprofits measure and show their impact. It simplifies how you plan, design, and measure
mission-driven programs. ImpactMap helps nonprofits make a difference more efficiently and effectively. We believe the nonprofit sector has been under-served by modern, easy-to-use software tools and we are on a mission to change this with software tools like
www.impactmap.org and custom software developments.

The NYer article was very interesting. Though I thought they were actually even more negative about microfinance!

Great article. If we are interested affecting positive social change then we must be willing to learn what works and what doesn't so that we can continuously improve. Those that don't operate in this manner are working blind and have no chance of intentionally achieving anything. I can only assume that those who don't employ continuous improvement/performance management practices either don't care about those they claim to want to help or they just don't know any better.

It should be noted however that formal evaluation is different from performance management. Performance management allows for the collection and analysis of data in real-time to understand if your efforts are helping to move you closer to your objectives. This allows you to make mid-course corrections to improve. Evaluation, is very valuable but is more about what you accomplished yesterday whereas performance management is about what you will do tomorrow.

Barbara-

Very well written and relevant piece. I like your style. You write about complexities in a very simple, straightforward manner. Nice work. (And, yes, I do think you should submit it for press...)

Your comments are right on target! As I was reading, I felt like shouting, "Yes! This is exactly what nonprofits need to hear!" There is a huge pool of data that could be collected and used, but isn't.

One addition I would make is in the power of collaborations bringing nonprofits together to increase their purchasing power. Software can be pricey, but that doesn't mean it is inaccessible. I wrote about some of our clients who came together to purchase our software, ClientTrack,in an interview with Amy Sample Ward (see http://www.clienttrack.com/OurCommunity/Blog/tabid/83/PostID/7/Amy-Sample-Ward-Interview-re-Collaboration.aspx). By joining together, three community action agencies were able to get state funding to implement an integrated software solution.

Additionally, the interview references another of our clients who implemented our software to track client progress across 60+ affiliated organizations. It's not about service outcomes anymore, but about individual outcomes across a wide continuum of care. That's a powerful level of analysis that we haven't seen happening, but is now possible. I urge you to look into our software a bit more because I believe it addresses an overwhelming majority of the issues you mention. There ARE accessible solutions, and nonprofit leaders need to know about them. There is no need to be "data starved," as you say, in a world of amazing technology.

Thank you, Valyrie. Having worked for numerous small non-profits I can attest to the grip of out-come based giving and the twisting and turning and waste of resources for compliance. If a funder is not going to give enough to solve the problem (generally not possible), then they need to give us the funding and let us do our work.

Most of the social good solutions will not end the problems they address any time soon, for the population or even for a given community, as long as new people are born into this world. Making a small non-profit accountable for producing global results makes no sense. We do make a difference with the individuals we serve. For the most part, we do use our resources wisely. We fill a need at the local level and are worthy of support for the work we do.

This is really terrific, Louisa! I particularly am drawn to the notion that nonprofits need to own evaluation and stop giving the power to define programs and success to others - media, watchdogs, funders, etc. Thanks for this post.

Allison

Thanks for this piece - it helps to communicate an important message.

For the past few years, I've been trying to get nonprofits and funders to understand the difference between the terms accountability and evaluation. Accountability is basically the process of determinig if a nonprofit is behaving properly - are they spending money responsibly, are they providing the services they proposed, and are they serving the individuals they are supposed to.

Evaluation is really the process of determining what outcomes resulted from a program, sevice, and project, as well as determining what components lead to these outcomes. In it's most useful sense, this evaluation data would then be used to inform the next evolution of the program, sevice, or project.

Unfortunately, both funders and nonprofits have been stuck in thinking of only accountability. Blame falls on both sides.

Funders assume most nonprofits aren't sophisticated to do evaluation, and the funders rarely provide the additional funds necessary to do evaluation. Therefore, only accountability measures are requested as part of a reporting process.

Nonprofits also fail to stand up to funders and request additional funds for evaluation. Nonprofits too often fall into thinking that they can't question the funder, which leads to just doing the bare minimum that the funder wants, even if that limits the amount of knowledge the nonprofit could generate from doing evaluation (and not just accountability).

Louisa, I agree. Thank you for the connect to the paper "A Lot to Lose." While I also agree that accountability and asking "does this work? how can we make it work better" are essential, those in the field know that this is not always easy and success (or setbacks) rarely attributable to one organization or service.
As for your idea that nonprofits need to redefine programs, Here Here!! See similar musing "Hope, dignity and quality of life are also valuable outcomes, even when measured in hours." at http://bit.ly/8iYuEk Gayle