The Center for What Works has joined forces with The Urban Institute to “provide the first sector-wide framework for nonprofit program outcomes and indicators for success.” This framework, they say, is to help nonprofit users to “identify and measure common program outcomes to benchmark and improve.”
It’s called the “Nonprofit Effectiveness Toolkit” (details at www.whatworks.org). And although it’s not all that elegant – kind of kludgy, actually, because it is customized and therefore not one-size-fits-all – it looks as though they’re onto something here.
They’ve come up with 14 different program areas you, as a nonprofit, can categorize yourself into, ranging from Adult Education to Emergency Shelters to Performing Arts to Youth Mentoring and Tutoring. Makes sense – since there are so many nonprofits with such varying missions.
The “toolkit” consists of webinars, phone consultations, and an action plan that they help you to create (through the phone consults). Custom-tailoring, so to speak.
It’s a good idea – part standardization and benchmarking, part customized buckets and missions. We look forward to seeing how successfully it works for the participants. Does it help them with funders? Does it help them stay on-task with their missions? Keep us in the loop!
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