ImpactStory

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Building a Common Outcome Framework to Measure Nonprofit Performance

The Urban Institute and its project partner, The Center for What Works, collaborated to identify a set of common outcomes and outcome indicators or “common framework” in the measurement of performance for nonprofits. The report, Building a Common Outcome Framework to Measure Nonprofit Performance identified a more standardized approach for nonprofits and organizations that choose to fund their efforts. The authors hope that this how-to guidance can help nonprofit organizations reduce their time and cost of implementing an outcome measurement process and improve its quality. With improved and more consistent reporting from grantees, funders, too, would be better able to assess and compare the results of their grants. This has been prepared so that the current results can be used as a resource for nonprofit organizations and their funders.

More than Numbers

The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies (Schusterman) developed this More than Numbers guide for organizations who seek to apply a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) lens to their internal data collection processes and assess and improve how they collect constituent information through tools such as alumni surveys and program evaluations. This guide does not address data collection for formal demography, national population estimates or academic research.

Nonprofit Fundraising Metrics

Donor Searches "Nonprofit Fundraising Metrics" article breaks down 26 ways to accurately measure your organizational progress, successes and shortcomings (and then build on those lessons for future campaigns). Nonprofit KPIs, or nonprofit fundraising metrics, can improve strategies, programs, and, ultimately, fundraising numbers if your nonprofit tracks them wisely. This guide covers everything you need to know about nonprofit fundraising metrics and offer 26 essential KPIs for your nonprofit to track by going over the following: Overview of nonprofit fundraising metrics, Nonprofit fundraising metrics best practices, General nonprofit fundraising metrics, Donor relationship metrics, Giving level metrics, Engagement metrics, Online performance metrics

The Generalizability Puzzle

The Stanford Social Innovation Review's Generalizability Puzzle is a paper that recognizes that any practical policy question must be broken into parts. Some parts of the problem will be answered with local institutional knowledge and descriptive data, and some will be answered with evidence from impact evaluations in other contexts. The generalizability framework set out in this paper provides a practical approach for combining evidence of different kinds to assess whether a given policy will likely work in a new context. If researchers and policy makers continue to view results of impact evaluations as a black box and fail to focus on mechanisms, the movement toward evidence-based policy making will fall far short of its potential for improving people’s lives.

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