Getting To Outcomes Csap. Billy Beane and Outcomes: What Can Baseball Tell the Nonprofit World About Measures and Measurement? Article: Creating and Measuring Real Outcomes. The phone rings. Someone wants to know, “What do you charge to do a strategic plan?” Or “What do you charge to do a workshop?” Instead of responding with a price, we instead have questions of our own.
What is driving you to do this plan / this workshop? What outcomes are you hoping this work will accomplish? What do you want it to look like when we’re done? What will have changed? Almost without fail, the person does not know. When we think of “outcomes,” we think of grant applications asking how we will measure them. After all the emphasis placed on outcomes in all these years, most organizations begrudgingly fill in what they hope will pass as an acceptable answer on their grant application, without ever really understanding how that measurement will provide any practical information to anyone. The purpose behind measuring program outcomes was supposed to have been improvement in the conditions in our communities. And that is because what the movement aimed us at was measuring. IRIS: Impact Reporting and Investment Standards. Nonprofit Performance Management. Nonprofit Performance Management Wish you had a genie to help you make those tough strategic decisions?
We can’t promise you a genie, but we can offer something just as effective (and a lot less annoying): Nonprofit Performance Management. Nonprofit Performance Management (PM) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help users make better business decisions. PM applications can provide: Better and more effective decision support Fast, easy analysis of huge volumes of information Integration of data from multiple systems, applications, and data sources A high-level view of your performance and constituent behavior Assistance with organizational budgeting, planning, and forecasting Easy-to-use Query and reporting capabilities Distribution of reports and information to hundreds of users for a low cost of ownership Advanced analytics of data using On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data mining Donor analytics.
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Non Profit Case Management Software by Social Solutions (Official) 'Social Outcomes': Missing the Forest for the Trees? | Venture Philanthropy Partners. January 2010 For the past month, I have worked through draft after draft of this column as I've struggled to properly express my concern about the growing movement to advance "social outcomes"—as well as "impact," "measurement," "metrics," "evaluation," "accountability," and a half-dozen other related concepts—for nonprofit organizations. Here is my concern, as best as I can manage to articulate it. I am increasingly worried that the vast majority of funders and nonprofits are achieving, at best, marginal benefit from their efforts to implement outcomes thinking.
Granted, there has been some truly meaningful progress. Select hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic have made great strides in assessing their outcomes and being transparent about their performance. And the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and a few others have keenly focused on the challenge of social outcomes and have dealt with them well. To What End? Most outcomes efforts today have drifted far from that end. "Social Outcomes": The Elephants in the Room | Venture Philanthropy Partners. March 2010 In my last column, “‘Social Outcomes’: Missing the Forest for the Trees? ,” I wrote about my deep, nagging fear that many efforts to assess outcomes are woefully off track.
I pointed to several wonderful beams of shining light in the field, from Youth Villages to the Cleveland Clinic. But my dominant message was that many efforts in our sector are causing more harm than good. After struggling though literally 20 drafts, I wasn’t sure whether the piece was even coherent. Of course, not everyone agreed with my analysis. The majority, however, agreed with the thesis that we’ve lost sight of the ends we’re trying to advance. Sins of Commission, Sins of Omission The feedback confirmed for me that nonprofit executives, staff, and boards; donors; and assessment experts are deeply frustrated with our sector’s work around outcomes. I heard a lot of anger at funders who don’t walk (or fund) their talk. In either case, please remember the critical, first-order question, “To what end?”
Outspoken About Outcomes for Nonprofits. In 1994, at a gathering of a dozen top social-sector leaders, Peter Drucker could clearly see potential for the nonprofit world to make huge strides in innovation, effectiveness, and impact. But a big question swirled in his head. “Though impressed by the emerging movement this group epitomized, he wasn’t convinced that it would amount to wholesale change in the mindset and culture of the social sector,” recalls Mario Morino, a participant in the meeting. For Drucker and the other attendees, the key was to figure out how to turn “this emerging movement into a true force for change.” More than 15 years later, Morino is still trying to do that. He offers some marvelous ideas in a new book, Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity, published by Venture Philanthropy Partners, at which Morino is chairman. It is the best thing on management I’ve read all summer. (It helped me sharpen some of what we’re trying to achieve at my own organization, the Drucker Institute.)
How Can Nonprofits Switch to a Data-Driven Culture? Example of A/B Testing Results I’ve been reflecting on why some nonprofits do a better job of measurement and learning, while others do not. What is the difference? It comes down to organizational culture. The nonprofits that embrace measurement have a data-driven culture. That is they make decisions based on meaningful data, rather than solely by gut. Not all nonprofits are born with the spreadsheet gene. What is needed for nonprofit organizations to make this shift? The Evolutionary Stages of A Data-Driven Culture It is helpful to look at making the switch as an evolutionary process.
Dormant: At this stage, the organization does not know where to start. Testing and Coordinating: At this stage, the organization is regularly collecting data but in a bunch of different spreadsheets and collected by different people or departments. Scaling and Institutionalizing: Has an organization wide system and dashboard for collecting measurement data that is shared with different departments. 1. 2. 3. PaulDuignanPhD's Channel. Why Outcomes? | The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox. On December 12th I will be presenting at the inaugural session of the Nonprofit Texas Leadership Institutes in Austin, sponsored by the Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations and the Center for Community-based and Nonprofit Organizations of Austin Community College. Preparatory to that event, Barry Silverberg, President of TANO, asked me to pen an article for the Institute’s first newsletter. The following is that article Why Outcomes?
Why should the nonprofit sector change what it has been doing for well over 100 years? That she was feeling pressured and under a tremendous strain was readily apparent: you could read it in the lines on her face and in her tired, tired eyes. “At a time like this,” she said to me wearily, “the last thing we can be concerned about is performance and quality.” The answer, of course, was survival….the survival of her programs, the survival of her staff and payroll…the survival, perhaps, of her entire agency. [1] Putnam, Robert. . [2] Suchman, Edward. Making outcomes work easier.
Shaping Outcomes: Glossary of Terms. The terms are listed in alphabetical order. To quickly jump down the page, click on a letter of the alphabet below. Key to using the Glossary: The phrase “In OBPE” introduces a definition that is geared towards the exact technical use of the term within the Shaping Outcomes OBPE methodology. The phrase “Sometimes in other fields” introduces an explanation of how the term might be seen in other contexts. Activities In OBPE, an “activity” is anything that staff on the program do which is not directly addressed to program participants.
Activities usually have to do with the management of the program. Sometimes in other fields, “activity” and “service” are used interchangeably, to include every action that is undertaken by program staff, partners or stakeholders. Affective See Attitudes. Applied to In OBPE, in order to have outcomes information, data is collected from some or all of the target audience (or participants). Top Behavior In OBPE, one type of outcome is called “behavioral.”
Shaping Outcomes: About Us: Overview. Shaping Outcomes: Provides an online curriculum in outcomes-based planning and evaluation (OBPE) Is designed for library and museum professionals as well as students in those fields Teaches the concepts and vocabulary of outcomes-based planning and evaluation (OBPE) Helps participants develop the skills necessary for producing a logic model using OBPE Was developed as a cooperative project between the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Shaping Outcomes can be used as: A self-paced online tutorial An instructor-mediated distance learning course A curriculum for library science and museum studies classes The basis for in-person or distance learning workshops Copyright © 2006 Shaping Outcomes Questions or comments about the website? Contact the Webmaster.