News & Views

The NYer article was very interesting. Though I thought they were actually even more negative about microfinance!

Great article. If we are interested affecting positive social change then we must be willing to learn what works and what doesn't so that we can continuously improve. Those that don't operate in this manner are working blind and have no chance of intentionally achieving anything. I can only assume that those who don't employ continuous improvement/performance management practices either don't care about those they claim to want to help or they just don't know any better. It should be noted however that formal evaluation is different from performance management. Performance management allows for the collection and analysis of data in real-time to understand if your efforts are helping to move you closer to your objectives. This allows you to make mid-course corrections to improve. Evaluation, is very valuable but is more about what you accomplished yesterday whereas performance management is about what you will do tomorrow.

This is really terrific, Louisa! I particularly am drawn to the notion that nonprofits need to own evaluation and stop giving the power to define programs and success to others - media, watchdogs, funders, etc. Thanks for this post. Allison

Thanks for this piece - it helps to communicate an important message. For the past few years, I've been trying to get nonprofits and funders to understand the difference between the terms accountability and evaluation. Accountability is basically the process of determinig if a nonprofit is behaving properly - are they spending money responsibly, are they providing the services they proposed, and are they serving the individuals they are supposed to. Evaluation is really the process of determining what outcomes resulted from a program, sevice, and project, as well as determining what components lead to these outcomes. In it's most useful sense, this evaluation data would then be used to inform the next evolution of the program, sevice, or project. Unfortunately, both funders and nonprofits have been stuck in thinking of only accountability. Blame falls on both sides. Funders assume most nonprofits aren't sophisticated to do evaluation, and the funders rarely provide the additional funds necessary to do evaluation. Therefore, only accountability measures are requested as part of a reporting process. Nonprofits also fail to stand up to funders and request additional funds for evaluation. Nonprofits too often fall into thinking that they can't question the funder, which leads to just doing the bare minimum that the funder wants, even if that limits the amount of knowledge the nonprofit could generate from doing evaluation (and not just accountability).

Louisa, I agree. Thank you for the connect to the paper "A Lot to Lose." While I also agree that accountability and asking "does this work? how can we make it work better" are essential, those in the field know that this is not always easy and success (or setbacks) rarely attributable to one organization or service. As for your idea that nonprofits need to redefine programs, Here Here!! See similar musing "Hope, dignity and quality of life are also valuable outcomes, even when measured in hours." at http://bit.ly/8iYuEk Gayle

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