What Gets Measured...

What are the conversations you are having regarding evaluating the success or "failure" of your non profit in achieving big and little picture goals?

Are you hesitant to have them because you feel like your ‘goal’ is so large that evaluating whether you are closer or further away from it seems futile? Do you shy away from the conversation because it could lead to questioning of your specific day to day tasks? Do you fear it will become about personal preference over hard data? Perhaps “metric centric” management is avoided because it’s felt as though reducing humans to a series of numbers on a grid will in some way diminish the humanity of the mission?  

Whatever the feelings against setting metrics and evaluating success compared to these standards, staff owe to one another, senior staff owe it to their boards and boards owe it to their donors to be continually setting targets and continually checking in to see how you are meeting those targets. It is one of the most fundamental responsibilities you have as an employee, board member or even ‘engaged volunteer’ in a non profit.  

Performance standards do not have to be purely quantitative, reducing your staff to a series of numbers on a grid. They simply have to be measurable. Surveying 100 volunteers and asking them “are you more or less enthused about the direction of this organization” is a good indicator of your executive directors performance, talking with the key donors about how they “feel” is still a totally valuable way of measuring. In some areas (ie money management) simple numbers may be enough to tell the story. Other areas (ie. board member contribution) a more “qualitative” conversation is needed. The point is - it has to happen in a structured, repeatable and measured form.

If you are not able to provide a critical self and external examination of your performance as a non profit (volunteer, staff, board member) to a donor, you should not be able to solicit that donor for funds. It’s not about showing perfection, but it is about showing that what you are doing is worth doing. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth doing well, it is worth measuring well.  

Don’t be lured into the trap of thinking you are ‘beyond’ performance standards or that your goal is so ‘intangible’ that we could never gauge whether we are more or less effective with our donor funds over last year. Let 2012 be a year where you figure out what the language of evaluation should be for your non profit and establish the framework to hold one another accountable to it.

You owe it to one another, to your board and to your donors and volunteers to properly manage the resources given to you; and as Drucker famously said “what gets measured, get’s managed.”