Do Good, Do it Now!
The mission of nonprofits is to do good. A core question is, how do you measure good?
It can be measured and should be measured. We have an obligation to our investors (donors) to do so. We must be rigorous about it. We must set goals in advance and we must report success or failure after the fact.
When we envision a program, we ought to consider the alternatives and the cost of the alternatives. Strategy is about making choices.
Now nonprofits are using cost per outcome, too. A program to get students proficient in math, for instance, can consider factors like location, teacher engagement, students’ language fluency, grade level, and parental involvement to predict how successful a program will be. It can then weigh the costs and effectiveness for different scenarios: Will it carry out the program five days a week with paid tutors in a location it will rent? Or will it ask parents to work with students at home two nights a week?
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