Nonprofit Literature Blog

More with Less: Evaluating Nonprofit Impact at the Field Level

Nonprofits are streamlining operations to maximize results while reducing costs. Can this approach be applied to assessing nonprofit outcomes?

FSG Social Impact Advisors has just released the report Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact, which explores methods for evaluating performance and outcomes across multiple organizations. Some systems can help the sector build the knowledge base necessary to tackle complicated issues more efficiently and effectively at the field level. Authors Mark Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst, and Lalitha Vaidyanathan note in the report:

“Adaptive Learning Systems also help to align organizational strategies and goals among the dozens or hundreds of organizations that influence an issue, thereby building the collective capacity of the entire nonprofit system. This is essential to solving complex social problems. Our failing public education system, for example, cannot be fixed only by improving early childhood school readiness, nor by targeting afterschool programs in middle school, nor by boosting college preparation efforts in high school. Any lasting solution must address the entire educational continuum.

Within and across this continuum, the ways in which different organizations coordinate and support each other’s work profoundly influence the effectiveness of the system as a whole. If early childhood programs aren’t aligned with kindergarten requirements, tutoring programs have no access to classroom materials or student test scores, and college preparation programs are not linked to local universities, the effectiveness of each program suffers. Even at a single point on the continuum, the lack of consistency across dozens of tutoring programs in a given city undercuts their success as students move among them from year to year.” (p. 16).

The research findings are available at the FSG Social Impact Advisors web site.

Tip: Turn to the appendix to learn more about shared measurement platforms, comparative performance systems, and adaptive learning systems in use today (includes four in-depth case studies).

Social Justice Philanthropy

The Foundation Center has just released Social Justice Grantmaking II: An Update on U.S. Foundation Trends. In 2007, social justice giving reached $3 billion, or 13.7 percent of overall grant dollars. In addition to statistical analyses, the report summarizes findings from interviews with 18 leading social justice funders and eight advocates/activists. Here is a sampling of perspectives from interviewees.

What some funders are saying:

-If you are having trouble advancing a multi-issue, multi-constituency collaboration, try “pursuing a strategy of ‘small tent’ collaborations, which contain fewer groups, and are seen to be more
nimble and disciplined and provide a higher level of trust and mutual accountability.”
-Evaluation is necessary, but can be counterproductive without clear protocols for measuring social justice progress quantitatively.

What some practitioners are saying:

-Interviewees believe there continues to be a divide between practitioners and grantmakers, and that there needs to be “more opportunities for honest, joint exchange—but not more ‘show-and-tell’ conferences.”

Find out more by downloading the report highlights or purchasing the full report at the Gain Knowledge area of the Foundation Center’s web site.

Foundation Termination: Learning From Other Grantmakers

You have been thinking about starting a foundation and wanted to consider including a sunset requirement. Before making any final decisions, you researched the topic and have reviewed the Foundation Center’s report Perpetuity or Limited Lifespan: How Do Family Foundations Decide? You have also learned from the experiences of other funders, reading Giving While Living: The Beldon Fund Spend-Out Story.

You next case study might be the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust (1968-2009), which terminated earlier this week after spending out its assets supporting ecosystem studies, music, conservation, and the urban environment.

The Trust’s final report not only describes the Trust’s funding strategies and the impact of its programs, but also includes brief sections that describe its termination strategies and other considerations.

In 1997, trustees decided to spend out in 2009, which was nine years earlier than the intended termination period of fifty years. There were several reasons for this. One factor was the evaluation of the grant programs, which convinced trustees that “the Trust had accomplished most of what it had set out to do under Mrs. Cary’s will.”

For more details, look for the report in the new books section of our library:
Trust Fulfilled: Four Decades of Grantmaking by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

Update:

You can learn more on this topic with a resource list prepared for the Perpetuity or Limited Lifespan program, July 9, 2009, co-sponsored by the Foundation Center and Philanthropy New York.