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2012Impact Measurement – Part Three of Three
A Post by James V. Toscano Measuring impact of nonprofit programs is clearly an important element in determination of benefit to society. It has also become a proxy to demonstrate return on investment to governments, foundations, corporations and other donors. The state of the art and science of such impact determination is largely work in progress. Certain nonprofit sectors, namely healthcare and education, are well advanced in such measurement compared to other sectors. Epidemiological methodology, such as used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has important elements that are available to be adopted/adapted by other sectors. Using such tools…
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2012Impact Measurement – Part Two of Three
A post by James V. Toscano There is currently considerable buzz about performance, outcomes, results and other measures of impact in the nonprofit world. Foundations and corporate funders are now interested in what the results of the inputs of their grants are. Individual donors are told that they should also be very interested in what their gift dollars produce. In the Part One, questions on the uses of epidemiological variables and the need for standardized measurement and agreement on those measures were raised. In Part Three, the necessity for empirical testing to really determine causality will be explored in some…