In our initial blog post, we identified five key shifts affecting the environment for nonprofits that have co-mingled with the economy to create the potential for continued rough times. The last post covered Shift #1: Nonprofits Need to Engage Their Donors. In this post, we'll explore how nonprofits need to change how they're telling their stories.
Shift #2: Nonprofits need to define themselves by their results
When you look at the websites of many nonprofits, as we do a lot, it's pretty easy to see that these organizations help a lot of people in need. Ironically, what you can't tell is just how many of these people tangibly improved their lives as a result of what the nonprofits did for them. One website, speaking of its work mentoring young kids, might give you numbers of how many people were matched up through their programs. That's pretty typical. But having a mentor is not the same as getting to grade level in reading, nor is it a promise that a child will be successful in some new way. Just like signing up for a workshop doesn't guarantee that by the end you'll have lost weight or stopped smoking.
Why do we make this point? Because we think nonprofits should cut to the chase and focus on achievement.
The traditional approach to outcomes muddies as much as it tries to clarify how nonprofits show the human gains they achieve. Moving to a clear report card of results, published annually, puts nonprofits in the outcome business, which is where they should be. But many nonprofits are running on the hamster wheel, trying to please funders who ask for a variety of different measurements of success, many of which don't move the organization toward a clear picture of true results. This is progress going in the wrong direction. Why?
First, nonprofits seeking grants get wrapped up trying to remember and repeat the language the funder uses. Is it a goal, an outcome, a result, a benefit or a target? And to show progress, are they establishing a benchmark, an indicator or a milestone? Given that one funder's benchmark is another's indicator, the nonprofit has to keep learning new terms just to comply with the language requirement. They'll do it because they want the money, not because it is essential to their mission, their work. What's even more serious is how outcomes have become their own form of compliance. Instead of looking for the core logic of a program, nonprofits want to make sure they have the right words in the right columns on the chart. They perfect the document rather than the program.
There are nonprofits out there that are changing the way "things are done" in the world of outcomes. If you know of one that has nailed this concept of results, a trailblazer, one that can teach us all, please share. Championing success is one way we will help others follow suit. Next time, we'll introduce Shift #3: Nonprofits need to ride for their brand.
Someone recently, perhaps here on Huff Po, wrote of putting 10 winos in a room with a single bottle of whiskey and saying, "One of you can have it." The writer continued, "While it's true that any one of them could get the bottle, the result is always one happy drunk and nine battered, bloody bodies." The grant system is much the same.
open your mind:
become well informed or
your money may well be wasted
on all-expense-paid "conferences" in exotic places for "chairty staff".
This is not just this one organization. Every organization I've worked for has been similar - environmental orgainzations, human services, arts, you name it. I'm lucky in that my husband works in the public sector and has access to benefits, because none of my jobs have offered them. I often half-jokingly tell people that "working for a nonprofit makes ME nonprofit."
Rather than trying to figure out what each funder wants, and the best way to present results to make each funder happy, a nonprofit should collect and present data that they themselves find useful to improve.
It is a shift in thinking - moving away from "what the funders want" to "what do I need to achieve better outcomes for my service recipients". Once the nonprofit has collected this information, it becomes very easy to share in in multiple forms. In my experience, this shift in thinking still generates almost all of what the funders seek anyway, but it has a much more profound effect on how nonprofits view the importance of collecting outcome information.
The second audience consists of number crunchers - the grantors, the accountants, the people who want to see more than how many people have been served. For this group, formulating the SROI (social return on investment) would be ideal.
The challenge for smaller orgs has always been the ability to wear many hats. With so few resources, do they focus on delivering programs and services, or reporting on them?
Nonprofits must be accountable, period. IMO, building in a method of measurement should be a part of the organization's DNA from the very beginning. True, measurement systems require work, but that doesn't absolve the small nonprofit from putting a form of measurement in place, even if it is something basic that they build upon. Having a measurement, and orienting around it -- revisiting and revising it -- helps nonprofits maintain focus and make decisions that allow them to better deliver on their missions. It keeps the small nonprofit focused on the change they want to create.
In my experience in the small venture philanthropy partnership I'm part of, being very clear on "the change you want to create" makes it easier to engage both the "heart" supporters and the "head" supporters.