I don’t have time right now to pontificate on this article I just found, from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, but if you work in the nonprofit world please read it.  In a nutshell it says that donors don’t do enough research on nonprofit organizations’ performance before they donate to them.  Donors tend to focus too hard on financial details like overhead percentage, when results is what really separates the wheat from the chaff.  This is what my United Way is all about and where we’re trying to go.  Here’s an excerpt:

In an ideal world, said Mr. Harold, each nonprofit would spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to gather data that would show over the long haul whether their work matters. That would be the “gold standard,” he said.

Because of cost, however, such a move is unrealistic for most organizations.

Instead, he said, he would settle for a “silver standard,” in which nonprofits attempt to articulate reasonable goals, adopt sound strategies for achieving them, and set up reasonable ways to measure whether they are achieving those goals, such as conducting evaluations among a nonprofit’s clients.

But many donors are themselves falling short—settling for what Mr. Harold says is a “bronze standard” of measurement.

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