One of the things that I found interesting about this weeks readings was that many nonprofits wished to analyze their own "effectiveness," but were not given extra resources or the permission to utilize resources towards such ends (a problem of restricted assets). This seems to be a major problem in seeking to improve metrics or evaluative tools for nonprofit effectiveness. Indeed, for-profit firms spend large amounts of money to measure their effectiveness in numerous ways. Without information or data concerning effectiveness, a nonprofit is likely to become static or complacent in its existence.
This article/blog goes into greater detail concerning nonprofits and their inability to allocate resources toward evaluation. What do you guys think?
I too was very interested in the study results by Hall in the Murray article. I also thought the high satisfaction level with evaluation efforts was an interesting contrast to the low satisfaction with constituent feedback addressed in Dr. Campbell’s article. I wonder of this is because the former perhaps dealt with quantitative results and the latter was qualitative?
ReplyDeleteCompasspoint.org’s former Board Café gave an interesting tool called “A "360 Degree Evaluation" of the Agency” You can read it here (scroll down): http://www.compasspoint.org/boardcafe/details.php?id=69
Their recommendations are for board members to conduct telephone interviews, but this qualitative data collection process would be very time consuming from a planning, implementation and analysis standpoint, because it has the potential for all the problems addressed by Murray. But I cannot realistically think of any qualitative process that is not time consuming. Can anyone else?
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is problematic to insist on more evaluation without provision of funds toward that activity. I think a lot of people who donate to non-profits do so hoping their money will be used in program-direct ways, and that many grants or foundations are given to support direct program funding, leaving little else for administration or other indirect costs. It would be great to see foundations begin giving out funding to directly support evaluation, as this process would help nonprofits use other funding more effectively.