Commenting on our article yesterday, Finding Stories for Fundraising, Jay Love asked:

“How about suggesting the NPO actually share the outcomes or results of their day to day work.  Such reporting is every bit as vital as an income statement and balance sheet in the for profit world.  Are they making a difference in whatever mission or groups they serve?  Are the groups they serve truly better off a year later?

The larger foundations are demanding such reporting.  I am betting that within a few years major donors will be asking to see the same outcome reports!”

Many business and governmental organizations use KPIs — Key Performance Indicators — to measure and monitor their success in non-monetary, but quantitative, ways. Targets are set and operations are measured against those.

For a service organization, this might include, for example, number of clients/customers served and at what rate. Or various customer satisfaction measures. Or percent of the market served. Or order-to-shipping times. It is the KPIs — many can be process-oriented — that measure the operational effectiveness that underlies profitability (or in the case of governmental entities, ratepayer or taxpayer approval).

Fundraisers on the direct marketing side of the biz of course have heaps of stats available to assess and evaluate performance, everything is measured (or should be), but they are probably unique in that respect within their organizations.

What Jay is talking about, however, is programmatic KPIs … measures a donor might look at on a regular basis to confirm the effectiveness of an organization they are supporting. Although, as noted above, many programmatic KPIs for a nonprofit might be process oriented (how many brochures did we send out last month?), at the end of the day the most critical KPIs, of course, relate to outcomes (how many freshwater wells and pumps did we install last month?)

For service-oriented nonprofits, KPIs measured and presented regularly should be a no-brainer.

For advocacy groups, I concede it can be tougher to get beyond the process-type KPIs. If you’re an environmental group that’s been lobbying — so far unsuccessfully — for declining caps on greenhouse gas emissions, what become your outcome KPIs? In this case, perhaps how many more Senators committed to your preferred policy; but not how many emails were generated before the vote.

Still, the effort must be made. As Jay points out in his comment, major donors (at least) expect to see credible measures of performance with respect to outcomes these days. And they expect to see them frequently  and ubiquitously (even on demand) … not just in the Annual Report and year-end appeal.

Now, I’m not sure what prompted Jay to make his comment about reporting results on a post about telling stories!

Unless it was to point us toward the most potent fundraising appeal of all … “Here’s the story of Jay Love and how your contribution changed his life. And guess what, last year with the support of donors like you we changed the lives of ### Jay Loves … twice as many as the year before! You can read more (or watch videos) of our success stories on our website.”

Stories and results … that’s a winning combination!

Tom