White Courtesy Telephone

March Metrics Madness

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I was recently invited by Bill Schambra, director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal, to speak on a panel titled Metrics Mania.  Panelists were asked to comment on an essay commissioned from Gary Walker, the founding director of Public/Private Ventures, on the subject of evaluating social programs.  Here is the text of my remarks ...

Bill Schambra saw my role on this panel as the guy who when asked about metrics replies “metrics schmetrics,” but I’m going to have to disappoint him—to some extent.  Measurement and evaluation, when done properly, are not just a bit of value-added for philanthropic or nonprofit work, they’re absolutely essential.  Only a fool would disagree with that proposition. 

But here I mean not just the kinds of formal evaluations described by Gary Walker in his essay, but informal evaluation as well: the kinds of course corrections we naturally make when we embark on a project, take a false step, and adjust what we do accordingly.  Evaluation is not and should not be the sole province of the highly compensated consultant.  We evaluate all the time; our own eyes and ears notice things the most astute consultant will never notice; and we’ll often be our own worst critics.

Now here’s where the metrics schmetrics comes in, perhaps: We’ve written more nonsense about evaluation than just about any other subject in philanthropy.  Worries about evaluation, engendered in part by logic models the length of whale intestines, have become the math anxiety of the philanthropic world.

My general thesis—if I could call it that—is that from the perspective of somebody like Mr. Walker whose organization has been commissioned to conduct lucrative, large-scale evaluations of social programs (lucrative by nonprofit standards), the Impact Revolution might seem like a good thing.  But from the ground, from the perspective of many people working in community-based organizations, this so-called revolution has brought with it new sources of irritation, new ways of adding meaningless make-work to already overburdened nonprofit staff members.

It has not been a people’s revolution, in other words, but rather one championed by elites—like myself, I’m afraid— sometimes unable to see far enough beyond our own measuring sticks to understand the limitations of formal evaluation techniques, and the trade-offs in staff time and other resources that these formal techniques require.

A Message for Ben Bernanke

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My friend Rick Hohensee is back.  He’s single and a Virgo, and you can visit him at his MySpace page or in front of the Treasury building in Washington, DC.  As for his credit line proposal, perhaps Rick can offer his talent for satire as collateral.  I believe the expression is “Oh, snap” …

R U Ready 2 Lead?

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Assuming the impending nonprofit workforce crisis is real and not imagined, we have some work to do.  The latest report on the subject, Ready to Lead: Next Generation Leaders Speak Out,* reviews the various factors that will make nonprofit leadership recruitment more difficult in the years to come.  The report is based on a survey of close to 6,000 mostly younger next generation leaders—the largest survey of its kind to date.

Retiring Baby Boomers and the money worries of Gen Xers and Gen Yers will constrain the supply of would-be leaders even as nonprofits are drawn into an all-out “war for talent” with the government and business sectors.  Meanwhile, a lack of support and mentorship from incumbent executives will make it difficult for younger staffers to develop the skills they need to lead a nonprofit organization.

We’ll soon see if market forces will, as some predict, smooth out the bumps in the road ahead.  It’s possible that with more openings in the leadership ranks, more young people will look for careers in the nonprofit sector.  Sector leaders may rally and create new training programs and new incentives for charitable work.

I’d worry less about the impact of this impending crisis if the sector were, in general, better bankrolled.  Instead, charitable organizations operate in an environment of chronic scarcity as they struggle to meet the demand for services.  In this kind of environment, current leaders neglect to nurture the younger talent in their ranks; board members lose touch with the overhwelming fundraising burdens on executive directors.

But if there’s a theme that runs through these various workforce reports, it might be this: Because it’s so hard to raise charitable dollars, those of us who direct the work of the sector—current executive directors and board members, in particular—are frequently tempted to recruit and retain good talent on the cheap; but our investments in staff are the absolute last places we should be looking to cut costs.

It used to be that if one applicant turned his nose up at a nonprofit job, there’d be three waiting in the wings to apply.  We’re moving into an era when the demographics will turn sharply against us.

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* I was one of the authors of this report together with Marla Cornelius of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and Patrick Corvington of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  I serve as vice president for programs and communications at the Meyer Foundation, one of the report’s primary sponsors.