Wisdom Nugget: Social entrepreneurs need to measure outcomes not outputs

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2008-11-07 08:04:00 UTC
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One of the challenges of social impact assessment is the tendency among nonprofits to focus their measurements on those things which are most inherently quantitative, rather than those things which actually need measurement.

The way that Debra Natenshon of the Center for What Works put it is that we need to remember to measure outcomes not outputs. As she said, "“How many people enroll” is different than “how many people’s skills increase."" Of course its that second element that we should be focused on.

An even more damaging measurement-mistake in my opinion is measuring inputs instead of outcomes. I think that holding nonprofits to the standard that they should only be spending 10% of their budgets on overhead (i.e. staff, staff capacity, infrastructure building, etc.) is well-intentioned but nuts. For some groups - humanitarian relief organizations, for example, where dollars on the group quickly and efficiently is the point- this makes sense. But for that to be the standard of nonprofit quality in general totally misses the point that what we should be focused on is whether nonprofits are achieving the social mission they set out to achieve in a way that is continuously improving and more efficient.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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