Tagged outcomes

A public airing of your performance measurement (or lack thereof) may be right around the corner

Ready to be rated on your nonprofit’s results?

There is a snowball gathering momentum and mass on its way down the hill in the USA and your board needs to pay attention to it now.

That snowball is the growing movement by independent intermediaries to develop simple rating systems for the very complex world of nonprofit performance and social impact. The goal of these intermediaries, spurred on by funders, is to provide accessible, online rating systems to steer philanthropic dollars to the “best performing” nonprofits.

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Now I’m worried – who decides what is effective and who should be funded?

I’m just amazed at the hubris of GiveWell, an unknown self-described nonprofit outcome evaluator, to believe that they have the credibility to issue the ratings they have and, by doing so, to tell donors not to give to these organizations. If this is the quality of analysis that we can expect from the type of “intermediary” organization being promoted by the Hewlett study, then it is hopeless to expect any real forward motion in understanding what works and what doesn’t.

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