I have had many rich conversations with nonprofit leaders and grantmakers about the importance of being effective in doing the work it takes to achieve their missions. We all lament the lack of adequate funding, staff, and volunteers that it takes to serve our clients and communities. Within those discussions inevitably comes the mention of nonprofit evaluation and accountability. These are like four-letter words to many organizations that can’t or just don’t evaluate their impact. So last night I attended a discussion given by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network on this very topic. Our breakout group talked about nonprofit evaluation and accountability in three spheres, if you will:
- Sector/Organizational – need to create a stronger culture of evaluation and data collection for accountability to stakeholders, community, and funders as well as for program improvement purposes
- Philanthropy – need to fund capacity building to enable the “space” for nonprofits to reflect on their work; give dollars for hiring consultants to perform objective evaluations for grantees
- Individual – need to engage in professional development to increase our individual knowledge and ability to come up with the right measures and methods to demonstrate impact; self-reflection is key if we want to be able to reflect as an organization
We also reflected a bit on Robert Egger’s book, Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient, and Rewarding for All and I think we are indeed begging for change instead of demanding effective partnerships to implement the kind of change that’s really needed. It seems we are out here raising millions of public dollars just to keep the status quo. Our mindset is all jacked up – somehow we went from a “let’s change the world” mindset to “just keeping the doors open” mentality. And I know a lot of people want to beat up on the funders for not supporting (financially) the infrastructure processes needed to make evaluation a part of our nonprofit organizational culture. But I think that’s the wrong road to take. It’s definitely a slippery slope. If there is anyone to blame, the onus is on the entire sector, and in fact I think it begins with nonprofits themselves, NOT the donors and funders of our work.
Now, somebody will say, “if nonprofits would just act like businesses, we’d all be much better off”. And we need to address where those convictions come from. Take, for instance, a great company like Southwest Airlines whose sweeping success has been attributed time and again (in addition to their low-costs) to the total quality management model used at all levels of the company. Southwest has consistently been able to deliver profits because their employees understand the importance of not just doing what they do, but doing it well. What if nonprofit employees took that same mindset and applied it to social service delivery? Then evaluation might be a more natural and embraced part of our organizational culture because everyone can see how doing our work efficiently can positively impact our social bottom line. If we can see how surveying clients and evaluating programs could help change their lives in the long run, perhaps we’d all be a little more apt to put the time and energy into doing it along with our “normal” tasks. Am I saying that nonprofits should be acting like businesses? Not at all. What I’m saying is that we need to be taking responsibility that the work that we are doing is actually helping communities. And if we find that it’s not, then we need to stop wasting precious resources on failing ventures. Am I saying that there are too many ineffective nonprofits? Hell to the yes. I think that many people start nonprofits to feel good, but many of us are not doing any real good, and we need to close shop.
But maybe what I’m really getting at is a new question. Perhaps we should not be asking what’s it worth to the sector to achieve social change, but what is it worth to YOU individually as a nonprofit employee or volunteer? We often behave as if our “organizations” are these independently responsible entities that have nothing to do with individual actions. Organizations can be ineffective, but the reasons behind that stem from the actions of the individuals within them. So when we say, “such and such organization should be evaluating their programs”, what we really mean is that some particular employees or stakeholders within that organization need to perform the actions it takes to do that. Maybe what really needs to happen is that we bring ourselves out of the abstract and pointing the finger at those big mean funders and step up our game right out of the gate for the sake of our mission.
What would it be worth to you if you could actually end teen pregnancy or homelessness or unemployment in your community? Or do whatever it is that your mission is. Isn’t that why you took a pay cut to work for a nonprofit anyway? To make a difference? I’m just saying that we all need to stop blaming our organizations, our funders, and various other external factors that interfere with our end goal: to eventually put our nonprofit out of business because we have successfully achieved our mission. Individually, we can all take personal responsibility for doing our work better and with more innovation to do what we say we are going to do for our communities.
