We often start our workshops and training sessions with examples of Charity Navigator’s nonprofit ratings data. We compare an organization with a four star rating to one with a one star rating and based on the data and ask the group to select the organization that should receive a $10,000 grant.

  CSR, nonprofit, and foundation professionals see the fall leaves turn and smell something in the air – conferences. The economy didn’t change the attendance numbers, energy, or engagement at this year’s Independent Sector Conference in Detroit, Michigan or the NetImpact Conference in Ithaca, New York. This particular thoughtscrap will focus on the highlights from the Independent Sector Conference in Detroit, Michigan.    The opening plenary by Melody Barnes, President Obama’s chief domestic policy advisor, was nothing short of insightful and inspirational. I’m glad she gets to play golf with President Obama.   

A recent article on Change.org addresses the commonly made assertion: There are too many nonprofits.  The author argues, rightly in my judgment, that the total number of nonprofits is irrelevant.  "What we need to be talking about," he asserts, "is how to get more good nonprofits, and fewer bad ones."

  It has become common practice for nonprofits and corporations to partner in a variety of ways. One could involve a corporation sponsoring a nonprofit event. Another kind of partnership could involve co-creation of a product line specific to that partnership. According to Mark Kramer’s recent article, “Catalytic Philanthropy” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Fall 2009), it’s not only beneficial but absolutely necessary for the two sectors to collaborate, leveraging all available resources, in order to achieve the next generation of long-term social impact. 

How much does the organization spend on overhead? How much of the organization’s budget is dedicated to programs? What about fundraising? Are these really the right questions to ask?

A recent blog post at GOOD touched on a key concept in the design of effective data visualization: “Every form of visualization should tell a story. Unfortunately there is limited attention and time to process all the stories. So the gist of the story, or its immediate impact, should be visible right away. The term I like to use for this principle is “glanceability.” What does a visualization tell us before we take time to analyze it?”

At the beginning of our work with a client, we often bring together a team of staff including executives and managers to construct a framework which describes the mission of the organization and the priority intermediate outcomes which combine to producing that impact.  It's an interesting process as a wide range of interests, needs, and responsibilities perspectives come together to form a cohesive whole.  It not only provides a context for ongoing strategic conversations, but it also helps each person see the value of their worth in the context of the organization.

Often met with a dreadful shudder or apathetic roll of the eyes, measurement can be an unfriendly topic among leaders of nonprofit organizations or program officers.  It can be seen as academic exercise that yields little useful information or, worse yet, a way for innovative and likely effective programs to be pushed off the table because measuring their impact seems impossible to do without unlimited time and resources.

What do I include on a dashboard? How do you guard against cherry picking metrics to look good? How do you select the highest quality metrics? Can you have too many metrics? These were some of the questions that participants raised during a recent webinar hosted by Guidestar and CompassPoint, called How to Build an Organizational Dashboard: Track and Measure Organizational Performance Easily and Inexpensively. The presenter provided a simple example of how organizations can use data to track their progress and share their results using dashboard.

If you are someone deeply involved in the nonprofit sector, you most likely receive daily emails, newsletters, or updates with some permutation of the following words: how to, nonprofit, survive, fundraising, downturn, results, and impact. It’s probably not a surprise that in this resource-constrained climate, many funders and donors are more targeted in their grantmaking and donating. They are demanding more data-driven results from grantees and less anecdotal evidence. In a recent survey, a group of 30-49 year-olds were asked to rank the importance of certain topics when considering donating through social media.