Nonprofits are saying, "If you want better data and outcomes, show me the money!"

A new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds that the imperative for improved data collection and outcomes lies as much with the foundations, as it does the nonprofits that report the data. While not surprising to many of you, this is highly encouraging for the nonprofit world; it opens the door to communication not only about how to best collect data, but also what data is the best to collect based on the desired youth outcomes.

The "Assessing to Achieve High Performance" report recognizes the complexity many nonprofits face when trying to measure the impact of their work with highly vulnerable youth and young adults who face an array of challenges. The solution for outcomes will never be clear cut with this population, but that is not an excuse to avoid exploring the most effective ways to measure performance and impact. Instead, foundations, researchers, and practitioners must come together to explore outcomes from all angles and perspectives in order to arrive at a method that captures the work and role of nonprofits in the lives of youth and young adults.

There is both good news and not so good news coming out of this report for nonprofits. The good news is that programs are using data to inform program services and communicate better with stakeholder on their work. Using data to inform program services allows for a strong feedback loop that can go a long way toward achieving high performance and helping those you serve be a part of how programming is provided. The not so good/not so surprising news is that nonprofits need investment from foundations to improve capacity, and they need full-time staff and expertise in evaluation.

In some cases, what nonprofits need from foundations is direct support on how to do performance measurement. Expertise abounds on how to effectively do nonprofit evaluation; however, many nonprofits cannot afford to keep this kind of expertise on staff or to allocate limited dollars to evaluation over direct service. MANY is encouraged by the research done by the Center for Effective Philanthropy and looks forward to additional opportunities to continue this conversation on how to build up local evidence bases and the partnership that can take place between nonprofits and foundations. What has your experience been in doing evaluation with foundations?