Archive for the ‘Effectiveness’ Category
Posted by Gayle Gifford on March 1, 2010 in Effectiveness, Strategic Thinking
I’m organizing a workshop for later this month for the Grantmakers Council of RI called “How Grantmakers can Help Nonprofits Survive and Emerge Stronger in 2010.”
The workshop will focus on how this climate presents unique opportunities for this sector to become more intentional about strengthening the nonprofit and philanthropic infrastructure.
As a few of the grantmakers have been overly focused on mergers as the solution in these tough economic times, the discussion will highlight other opportunities shy of merger for collaboration and consolidation of management services.
Last Thursday I was chatting with a consultant colleague whom I’ve recruited to be on the panel. She was recounting her own work facilitating mergers and how these experiences have left her convinced that mergers are often not worth the time and expense that goes into them. She was pointing out that mergers usually require costly consultation and legal services and amazing amounts of time and energy from the staff and Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 9, 2010 in Effectiveness, Nonprofit Highlights
It was exciting to get word of the lawsuit launched this month by former client Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) and a number of other environmental groups. EarthJustice launched the suit on their behalf against well known cleaning product manufacturers who have been flouting New York State’s strong labeling laws.
“The bottom line is that hazardous ingredients that have not been tested for long-term health impacts, like asthma or even birth defects, are being used in some cleaning products,” said Erin Switalski, executive director of Women’s Voices for the Earth. “Consumers have a right to know if they are spraying their kids’ high chairs with toxic chemicals. Without full ingredient disclosure from these companies, there’s simply no way to be sure.” (From SustainableBusiness.COM)
Unfortunately, you won’t find WVE listed at a big rating sight like CharityNavigator because they don’t meet its income levels (less than $500,000 in public donations, $1 million total budget). Yet. (that’s where you can help.)
Thankfully, a number of smaller private foundations understand the essential role that an organization like WVE plays in knitting together women’s health and environmental concerns.
Despite its small size, WVE has played an important role in getting manufacturers like OPI and Clorox to clean up their products.
I’ve seen this passionate band up close and can testify to its worthiness and its leanness. It could use a lot less of the lean. And more of your green.
Please don’t assume that just because an organization isn’t showing up on a rating site that it automatically should be excluded from your consideration. Dig deeper. You’ll find some real treasures out there.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on January 22, 2010 in Effectiveness
It’s been a very interesting week.
My post on Tuesday, “My worst nightmare is now true, sloppy ratings ratings of nonprofit effectiveness in Hatii,” and a storm of Tweets generated quite a bit of attention.
As Tuesday’s post explains, after my first critique, Guidestar changed their hastily constructed home page listing Top Ten Relief Organizations Working in Haiti, which I strongly debated the evidence for, to a somewhat more accurate Most Reviewed Relief Organizations in Haiti.
After a long conversation this afternoon with Debra Snider, Guidestar’s VP of Communications and Administration, and Shari Ilsen, Director of Marketing and Outreach at GreatNonprofits, Guidestar made the laudable decision to drop the listing altogether.
Now when you land on Guidestar’s homepage and scroll down, you’ll see Disaster Action Center and encouragement to post a review if you have firsthand experience with an organization working in Haiti. A link takes you to the site of GreatNonprofits.
Why is this so much better? Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on January 20, 2010 in Effectiveness
Evening update. I just discovered the press release sent out by Guidestar and GreatNonprofits touting their reviews. How do you spell “No Shame?” Seems it may be time to follow the money to see who benefits.
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UPDATE from this afternoon: As a result of Tweeting, Guidestar has now changed the title of the list discussed in this blog to more accurately reflect what it is: “Most Reviewed Relief Organizations in Haiti.” If a handful of reviews qualify as “most.”
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Original Post:
I was doing a bit of research today that required me to look up a few organizations in GuideStar.
Imagine my surprise to find on Guidestar’s home page the following list:
“Top Ten Relief Organizations Working In Haiti”
Wow! That’s quite a claim. What was their criteria for picking these 10 out of all the other NGOs they listed as doing work in Haiti?
Guidestar goes on to say under that amazing headline: “Donors, clients, and volunteers have identified these nonprofits as the most effective working in Haiti.” Hmm.
So I clicked the button “learn more or write reviews.”
When I clicked through, this took me to “Disaster Action Center” which seems to be a collaborative effort of Guidestar and GreatNonprofits.
You may not have heard of GreatNonprofits yet. I hadn’t until they were named in a holiday giving press release put out by a consortium of third party intermediaries that have been setting themselves up as the “go to” rating places if you want the skinny on nonprofit effectiveness. (You can see my rants on this in prior blog posts like “Join a lively debate on rating nonprofit societal outcomes” or others under the effectiveness tab.)
GreatNonprofits invites donors, clients and volunteers to do little reviews of the nonprofits they support or have benefited from. Anyone can go online and write a review and choose the number of stars they’d like to give to that nonprofit. Kind of like the ratings on Amazon.
So I clicked through to read the reviews of some of the organizations that were listed by Guidestar in the Top 10 and some that weren’t in the Top 10 but also seemed to have 5 Stars, the top rating.
I admit it. I didn’t click on every nonprofit. But the ones that I did, that were listed in the Top 10, had ONLY 1 or 2 Reviews. That’s it.
But some of the NGOs that didn’t make the Top 10 list also had the same number of stars and same number of reviews. For example, World Vision International had five stars and two donor reviews (as of 3:55 pm EST today) and they were in the Top Ten list. PLAN USA had five stars and two donor reviews and they were not listed as being in the top 10 list.
And some of the donor reviews had nothing to do with Haiti. Assuming they really are donors, right? I mean, who’s to say that the reviews aren’t the work of a PR firm hired to write the reviews. Or fund development staff?
When I suggested on Twitter (you can find the conversation by searching @gaylegifford) that it was absolutely shameful for Guidestar and GreatNonprofits to be naming a top ten list based on 1 or 2 donor reviews, GreatNonprofits replied:
@gaylegifford its a new site-we need more reviews 2 build the resource. U can help by spreading the word 2 post at http://bit.ly/gnpdisaster
It’s pretty obvious to all that they need more reviews to even begin to have a credible claim. That is, if you buy the whole idea that rating NGO effectiveness is the same as reviewing a book or toaster, which I don’t. It’s not that I don’t think that feedback from donors et al isn’t helpful. Caveat emptor on that.
But to then take those skimpy reviews and definitively name a top ten list of effectiveness based on the handful of reviews and the handful of organizations reviewed, I’m still shaking my head.
By the way, shouldn’t there be some distinction made between what donors say and what clients or volunteers have to say?
But what irresponsible hubris to make a claim about NGO effectiveness in a disaster of this magnitude based on what I might describe as a complete lack of credible information.
I’m not saying that some of the organizations on the list don’t deserve their rating . But I am saying that GreatNonprofits and Guidestar have absolutely no credibility if this is the criteria they are using to be telling donors or the media that their uninformed list is in the Top 10 in Relief.
None.
P.S. By the way, just because an NGO has done good work in Haiti in the past (e.g. a school) doesn’t mean it has the competency to do the type of relief work that is needed in a disaster of this magnitude. Or the capacity to handle huge amounts of short term aid.
What would be helpful is for those organizations that have been working on the ground for some time in Haiti to communicate with each other and with the world community how donations can best be used … for relief or for long term rebuilding.
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Posted by Jon Howard on January 15, 2010 in Effectiveness, World News
It’s hard to be hard-headed about giving to Haiti when people are hungry, thirsty and injured. But before you reflexively hit the DONATE NOW FOR HAITI button on the first email (or text message) you see, take a moment to consider your own values. Even in emergencies, perhaps most of all in emergencies, it’s important to try to give in ways that can help to avert similar disasters in the future.
Timothy A. Wise reminds us that “aid is power” in his 2005 blog posting Humanitarian Crises: What is a Progressive to Do? A lot of American aid power goes, intentionally or unintentionally, to helping entrench American businesses and exports at the expense of local products and producers. Food aid often winds up driving local produce and producers out of business. Reconstruction contracts with international construction firms undercut local professionals, builders and workers. Wise advises sticking with agencies which were present before the crisis and will stick around later and those with clear strategies to build local capacity.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on January 5, 2010 in Effectiveness
1. Passionately pursue that big vision of societal (or personal) change.
- Inspire other visionaries.
- Join dreams together.
- Be realistic, but don’t let obstacles become your excuse.
- Celebrate each step forward.
2. Ensure that you are trustworthy and worthy of support.
- Do what you have promised to do.
- Work on what matters.
- Measure, analyze, learn, adjust.
- Model your values and ethics.
3. Think and act strategically
- Understand the systems in which you operate
- Remember, everything is in motion.
- Seek knowledge, all kinds – you never know what you’ll need to know
- Find the leverage
- Seize opportunity
4. Love your donors
- Communicate, engage, thank.
- Don’t take anyone for granted.
- Love the small ones as much as the big ones.
5. Enable people who make things happen.
- Match the right talent to the right job.
- Agree on individual outcomes that matter.
- If you are seriously stuck, take another look at who’s doing the doing.
- Train, coach, mentor, reward.
- Remove the barriers you’ve put in their way.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on January 4, 2010 in Effectiveness
I never expected that I’d jump right into the New Year’s blog by joining a lively debate of proposed new rating systems for nonprofit societal outcomes.
But I couldn’t resist adding my cautions to the lively exchange taking place between my dear colleague Hildy Gottlieb and CharityNavigator’s Ken Berger.
Hildy is making the case for measuring community-wide outcomes first, rather than isolating individual nonprofits and ascribing outcomes to them. Ken and colleague Robert Penna argue back that most nonprofits work on individual or family level outcomes and thus their impact can be isolated and measured.
Is that true? Perhaps to some extent. But really, how effective can a community mental health organization be in serving the needs of its clients when they may be recently laid off, facing foreclosure, and unsure of their next meal? How effective is even the best of schools or classroom teachers when their students face these same concerns?
I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s book In defense of food over my vacation. I’m struck by the comparisons between the inadequacy of reductionist science to evaluate food and its impact on our health and the similar challenge of ascribing definitive causality to a particular nonprofit intervention wholly independent of other factors (including the quality of the implementers and not just the selection of implementation method).
You can read my comments and add your own at today’s Open Forum on Ken’s Commentary.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 16, 2009 in Effectiveness
I continue to ruminate on the coming onset of 4 star rating systems for nonprofit societal outcomes.
One of the concerns gnawing at me is how we may end up valuing only big societal measures and foresake the equally important small things that improve the quality of life of individual human beings.
I was wondering how my client, Providence InTown Churches Association (PICA), would measure up in such a rating system.
For example, here’s one of their success stories:
Joe came to us after seven years in prison. He was staying with his sister but left because she lived in public housing and he didn’t want her to lose her home because of him.
Joe told us that prison saved his life because he came out clean of his drug habit. He found a job doing body repair work. We gave him a monthly bus pass to get back and forth to work and to his meetings.
We took him to look at apartments. When he found one he could afford, we connected him with Road Home money to pay his damage deposit.
We still provide bus passes. He has his son every weekend and has reconnected with his family. Through us, his son was “adopted” for Christmas giving. We gave him a Thanksgiving basket so he could invite his family to his apartment for the holiday.
While we are still providing Joe with help, his life is a lot different than it was a year ago.
PICA doesn’t pretend that it will eliminate hunger or homelessness from the city of Providence, the kind of social impact that these big rating systems are looking to steer donors to.
What it does best is serve up a heaping portion of dignity, hope, kindness, and personal advocacy. It is the support system and family for those who have none.
PICA serves over 200 meals, caring and kindness every Friday night and runs a daily client choice food pantry that is now serving 1,300 people each month. Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on November 25, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Effectiveness
In the national rush to accelerate nonprofit collaboration and consolidation, we shouldn’t lose sight of the goal.
At the end of the day, nonprofit collaborations, joint ventures, mergers, or whatever should produce a better result for their community than what any individual organization might achieve working alone.
A few benefits:
- Fiscal sponsorship enables a group to focus on the challenges or needs in its community — the reason it was started – without having to staff finance or payroll departments. In turn, the fiscal sponsor enables valuable mission-related programs to flourish while it puts its excess administrative capacity to better use and gains the additional revenue from the small fee it charges to provide these services.
- Each member of an advocacy coalition realizes the political power of a larger group, or benefits from working with more knowledgeable partners, or doesn’t need to repeat the mistakes their colleagues have made. And often the coalition itself becomes attractive to funders who might have been out of reach, leveraging new resources for its members to advance their missions.
- In the Chattanooga museums collaboration I wrote about in an earlier blog post, the smaller museums gained from the administrative support and the staff expertise of the largest among them. The staff of the largest museum which was providing shared services found their jobs more interesting. And all the museums and the community gained by creating a lively waterfront populated with thriving, well-managed cultural resources.
When collaboration achieves its goal, the whole adds up to much more than just a simple sum of the parts.
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Posted by Jon Howard on November 17, 2009 in Big ideas, Effectiveness
Last week, I attended the Social Enterprise Rhode Island Summit, a project of Social Venture Partners of Rhode Island. I came with a chip on my shoulder.
The term “social enterprise” has swept the non-profit world. Everyone from startups to the old dinosaurs of the public service world now claim to be “social entrepreneurs.” It’s a great style statement. Just tell me: what does it mean?
What’s the harm in a buzzword? For one, hoopla about “innovative, market-based models” gives business and government more cover for starving health care, education and other critical social investments of the real resources they need. Be that as it may, the SERI Summit knocked the chip off my shoulder with its energy, optimism, good will and some really smart solutions to problems described by featured panelists.
Who could be grumpy about Hippowater International, a cool low-tech solution to the huge burdens that fetching water imposes on women and girls around the world? Who would not admire Rajiv Kumar’s clever use of peer pressure to mass-market healthy exercise through Shape Up Rhode Island or the way his group’s leveraged the market value of the mission to underwrite national impact? What child of the Sixties wouldn’t be charmed by John Abram’s stories about South Mountain, the employee-owned design and construction company he founded?
What else I loved about this summit:
- Lots of stories, lots of ages, lots of perspectives.
- A big, lively crowd – 200? 300? More? – full of people I knew and didn’t know.
- Just enough slack in the schedule for random encounters.
- Lots of energy and curiosity and a refreshing lack of certainty.
- Mashups: new-tech/no-tech, for-profit/non, thinkers/doers.
The conference moderators frankly refused to define social enterprise. (Check here for Wikipedia’s definition, or this one, from the British government’s Office of the Third Sector). Instead we heard a wide range of ideas and stories from people who put themselves under this big umbrella. Here are some common threads I captured:
- Problem-solving
- Profit-seeking
- Social mission
- Innovative, inventive, creative
- Values design
- High- and low-tech solutions
- Focus on cost reduction
- Bias for data
- No “conventional wisdom”
A list isn’t a definition and none of these are qualities are exclusive to “social enterprises.” Lots of the organizations that presented looked like regular old, resourceful, dedicated and professional nonprofits to me. But, there’s no denying that this was a different crowd with a different vibe than you’ll find at conferences called by the Association for Fundraising Professionals, the Rhode Island Foundation or the United Way, all still vital centers of learning and support for nonprofits
I still think that the lack of serious, well-directed investment capital, not a shortage of clever ideas, is the chief barrier to moving the national needle on education, among other critical needs. Social entrepreneurs won’t get the job done if they settle for praise and token funding. But I’m now more hopeful that a generation of who speak a business dialect and live in an enterprise culture could really generate or attract that investment.
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