This post originally appeared in GovLoop.

New York City is giving nonprofits a reprieve.  But will the City get any bang for its buck?

The New York Times recently published an article highlighting the city of Somerville, Massachusetts - a city that's actually trying to measure its residents' happiness.

Last Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast hosted by Chicago’s CR Group.  The keynote speaker at the event was none other than Chicago’s Mayor Daley.  His address was focused on a new citywide initiative entitled “One Good Deed Chicago”, a program designed to get more citizens invested in impactful volunteerism and community service in the city.

One of the most powerful tools that we use is the Success Equation.  We use this framework at the beginning of almost every client engagement and every workshop that we lead.  It encourages organizations to consider their impact as a simple regression equation:  A + B + C = D.   D is the ultimate impact you’re trying to achieve.  A, B, and C are the intermediate steps that lead to that impact.  They are the intermediate outcomes.  Your research and theory of change suggest that if you accomplish A, B, and C, then you will also accomplish D.  Only after the A, B, C, and D have been defined do we start talking about measurement. 

  Our team at Mission Measurement recently took a field trip to Loyola University to view the documentary Race to Nowhere.  The film was provocative for a number of reasons, but particularly from the perspective of outcomes-based thinking.

Walmart has just announced a five-year plan to make thousands of its store-brand packaged foods healthier as well as less costly.  The plan comes with the support of First Lady Michelle Obama, a champion for nutrition, healthy living and the reduction of child obesity.

Yesterday, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah delivered a powerful speech at the Center for Global Development marking the beginning of a new era for the federal government's most specialized development agency.  In his speech, aptly titled "The Modern Development Enterprise," Shah outlines how USAID will transform from a traditional aid agency to an organization built on efficiency, impact and data-driven decision-making. Shah first lays out a number of top USAID global development programmatic areas that address key priorities in the State Department's development agenda:

As a mission-driven organization itself, Mission Measurement strives to measure and increase its own social impact.  The scope of this impact can be seen in the investments made by the organizations with whom we work – from school networks to Fortune 100 corporations to social service nonprofits. Through our work, we help organizations examine and realign their budgets to maximize their impact, both internally and through grantmaking and other investments.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) – or public-private alliances (PPAs) - are receiving increasing amounts of attention. There is broad acknowledgement across the public and private sectors that sustainable solutions to serious development issues require collaboration.  Additionally, the current economic conditions create an intensified desire to mitigate risk and to share resources and expertise.  Under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, the U.S.