This morning, National Public Radio featured a piece on the upcoming results aspect of Charity Navigator’s rating system. Charity Navigator rates nonprofits to help donors make decisions on their giving. Ken Berger, the President of Charity Navigators described the new system as exploring how clearly nonprofits identify the problem they try to solve and how well they have done at solving that problem.
Several organizations expressed concern at the rating system; particularly that their work is complex and difficult to measure. Those concerns are very valid, and made particularly challenging by the great variety within the sector. For example, it may be difficult for the arts and health organizations featured within the story to learn from or adapt much of each other’s measurement systems.
One piece of advice we have often given our nonprofit clients: if you can articulate it, you can measure it. For example, we worked with Principals for the Arts, a program in San Francisco Public Schools, to more clearly articulate how principals, their staff and schools, would change after exposure to the arts. For example, program staff told us they hoped principals would become more committed to arts education. We talked with them about what this might look like, and we identified things that principals could control: gradually increasing time in the school schedule for the arts, and promoting staff use of the arts in the classroom. We then measured to what extend principals had shown their commitment in these ways.
If you are thinking about measuring complex outcomes, start with articulating what you’d like to see, and then what you would actually be able to observe as a result.This morning, National Public Radio featured a piece on the upcoming results aspect of Charity Navigator’s rating system. Charity Navigator rates nonprofits to help donors make decisions on their giving. Ken Berger, the President of Charity Navigators described the new system as exploring how clearly nonprofits identify the problem they try to solve and how well they have done at solving that problem.
Several organizations expressed concern at the rating system; particularly that their work is complex and difficult to measure. Those concerns are very valid, and made particularly challenging by the great variety within the sector. For example, it may be difficult for the arts and health organizations featured within the story to learn from or adapt much of each other’s measurement systems.
One piece of advice we have often given our nonprofit clients: if you can articulate it, you can measure it. For example, we worked with Principals for the Arts, a program in San Francisco Public Schools, to more clearly articulate how principals, their staff and schools, would change after exposure to the arts. For example, program staff told us they hoped principals would become more committed to arts education. We talked with them about what this might look like, and we identified things that principals could control: gradually increasing time in the school schedule for the arts, and promoting staff use of the arts in the classroom. We then measured to what extend principals had shown their commitment in these ways.
If you are thinking about measuring complex outcomes, start with articulating what you’d like to see, and then what you would actually be able to observe as a result.