While reading the working paper by Ebrahim & Rangan (2010) for this week, I found myself intrigued by the authors' statement that: “funders such as foundations, governmental departments, and international aid agencies, are far better positioned than most nonprofits to measure impacts. A foundation that supports efforts in health care, for example, is uniquely situated to see how the work of all its grantees might link together – to connect the dots among a series of outputs and outcomes, to analyze how they lead to impacts” (p. 30).
As I read this statement, I wondered how many foundations actually measure the impact they have as funders of selected groups of nonprofit organizations. I don’t know enough about foundations to answer this question. From what I do know about foundations, it is clear that foundations often require their grantees to measure their performance. However, it is unclear to me if foundations measure their own performance, in terms of the impact the portfolio of nonprofits they fund has as a whole.
My opinion on the subject is that foundations should measure impact, if it is feasible for them to do so. The authors explain that it sometimes does not make sense for organizations to measure impact, depending on their operational strategies and theories of change. Therefore, it seems as though it would not always make sense for foundations to measure their impact, if they mostly fund organizations whose operational strategies and theories of change make it difficult or illogical to do so.
Do any of you know if many foundations measure impact? How important do you think it is for foundations to measure impact? Do you agree with the authors that foundations “are far better positioned than most nonprofits to measure impacts”?
I would agree that evaluation for foundations is easier as the indicators for measuring their impact usually are more general (like financial report and narrative reports, sometimes once per year field monitoring visit). Their performance depends on the recipients’ (organizations that receive grants) performance and reporting. And they can control to whom to give money to insure maximum effectiveness. Their impact can be bigger as they accumulate the outcomes of many organizations/recipients to show the impact and difference they make.
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