In response to this post at Tactical Philanthropy
Comparing a ‘moment’ at a wedding to changing peoples lives is an apples to oranges comparison. This argument does not hold water.
For a ‘low hanging fruit’ example, look at measuring the impact of an organization whose mission it is to combat chronic homelessness. Either a person is chronically homeless, or not. We may quibble over the definition of chronic homelessness. It may be expensive to track the homeless to know whether there has been a relapse. But it is most certainly not a ‘fantasy.’
Looking at a harder case, say an organization whose mission it is to increase democracy, one may argue that measuring the impact here is truly impossible.
If that organization has a clearly articulated mission, supported by a theory of change, and well developed strategies and program logic flow to inform their tactics, then they will necessarily be measuring impact. Whether this be the number of youth registered to vote in a given timeframe, or the number of contributors to a given blog.
The challenge here is NOT that it is a fantasy. The challenge is that it is time intensive and thus expensive.
We, as nonprofit professionals, should not write off impact and attribute it to some kind of wizardry that is as allusive as a magical moment at a wedding.
Rather, we should seek to innovate around how to reduce the cost of outcome/impact measurement and improve our methods. We should also be discussing how we balance the cost of impact measurement with the challenge of allocating capital in our organizations with imperfect information.
These are the real issues. This should be the real discussion.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: impact, measurement, Nonprofit, outcome measurement, Yale School of Management
Thank you, David. I made a similar case for impact measurement on Tactical Philanthropy last month. (http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2008/06/invest-in-the-best-to-make-an-impact#comment-3815) Just because outcomes measurement is difficult and hard to grasp doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Our firm is working with a client to tackle a mission statement roughly paraphrased into, “Leadership to Change the World.” Well, what does that look like? But we assembled a team, thought through the ideas and developed indicators that would be relevant to the mission. We developed a 50-question survey designed to take no more than 10-15 minutes, which will be delivered electronically. The results of the survey questions link back directly with programs and services so they can be improved with the survey input. Now this isn’t a panacea for all nonprofits out there, but it is proof that measuring the intangible can be done at a reasonable cost.
I think it’s really up to foundations to require outcomes assessments from their grantee organizations (or even fund the initiative to create the outcomes). They have the resources to make long-lasting impact in their focus areas. They’re going to drive the process.
Andrea –
Thanks for posting. I checked out your previous post and have responded. How is your study progressing?
I would like to challenge your statement that it is up to foundations to require outcome assessments. I think it is everyone’s responsibility: foundations, individual donors, corporations, nonprofit professionals (demand-side and supply-side entities) to hold the bar up high and take advantage of the good practices that (mainly) foundations have developed.
Thanks for the challenge, David. You’re correct that it is everyone’s responsibility to require outcomes assessments. I think foundations (and I would include individual donors and corporations in this group) wield the necessary resources to compel their funded organizations to change. Many nonprofits don’t have the resources to establish metrics and data collection and therefore will be left out of the trend towards outcome measurement. Some foundation executives we’ve talked to have even said that their funded organizations are losing out on additional funding because outcomes assessments are not even on the organizations’ radars. It’s a subjective statement, yes, but I think the gut check is real. Those with the resources need to lead the pack and increase the awareness of the trend towards outcomes.
I’ll keep you posted on our study as the data is collected. Thanks for your interest!