How Do I Manage Performance?
Effectively managing a nonprofit’s performance begins with a clear understanding of what the organization is trying to achieve, what's being done, what progress is being made, and what’s needed to help the organization increase its impact.
As such, managing performance begins with measuring performance. Effective measurement lets leaders help staff, directors, and volunteers do better work by setting clear goals and identifying an organization’s strengths and weaknesses. It also enables leaders to make a clear and compelling case to funders about their ability to make progress toward results.
To learn more about managing nonprofit performance, we recommend the following materials. Our “Deeper Dives” section offers more detail on specific topics.
Getting Started:
How can visionary nonprofits make the critical transition to stronger management
(Bridgespan Group, Daniel Stid, Jeffrey L. Bradach)
Strong management is a critical characteristic of an effective organization, yet the environment in which nonprofit leaders operate often reinforces visionary leadership at the expense of management disciplines. In this article, a select group of nonprofit leaders reveal how they purposefully navigated the path towards stronger management.
(This article also appears as "How Visionary Nonprofit Leaders are Learning to Enhance Management Capabilities" in the January 2009 issue of Strategy & Leadership.)
Measuring for Mission
(Bridgespan Group, Don Howard, Susan J. Colby)
Performance measurement is a valuable management tool for achieving greater impact. But it is remarkably easy for an organization’s leaders to get hung up trying to collect measures that don’t tell them very much. This case study explores how the leadership team at Great Valley Center developed a system that would allow them to assess performance and share results easily with key stakeholders.
(Bridgespan Group, Susan J. Colby, Nan Stone, Paul Carttar)
Getting critical resource decisions right—allocating time, talent, and dollars to the activities that have the greatest impact—is what "strategy" is all about. In this article, originally published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, authors Susan Colby, Nan Stone, and Paul Carttar draw on client experience to discuss the challenge of mapping limited resources against seemingly unlimited needs.
From Data to Decision Making
(Bridgespan Group, Alex Cortez, Liana Vetter )
Data should be a source of strategic value for nonprofit managers, but too often, it provides incomplete or misleading information. This case study describes how the leaders of Our Piece of the Pie, a youth-serving organization based in Hartford, Connecticut, learned how to collect just the data they needed to make better decisions about programs, cost-management, growth, and funding needs.
Deeper Dives:
Answering the Hard Question: "What Difference Are We Making?"
(Bridgespan Group, Katherine Kaufmann, Bob Searle)
This case study explores performance management at a foundation. The leaders of the Annie E. Casey Foundation wanted to be able to say, with confidence, "Our money is having the impact we want it to have." To that end, leaders of the Foundation's Education Program worked with grantees to create a results-based measurement system.
Increasing Productivity and Reducing Costs without Sacrificing Quality
(Bridgespan Group, Bob Searle, Alex Neuhoff)
When an organization is stretched too thin for too long, beneficiaries stand to suffer as quality declines. Improving internal operations can increase productivity and reduce costs—all without sacrificing quality. Two youth-serving organizations, Year Up and Jumpstart, provide successful examples how nonprofit organizations can indeed get more bang for the buck.
(Bridgespan Group, Ann Goggins Gregory, Don Howard)
Organizations with robust infrastructures, from information technology systems to skills training, succeed more often than those without. Yet nonprofits routinely under-invest in such beneficial overhead, and donors often decline to fund it. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Bridgespan Director of Knowledge Management Ann Goggins Gregory and Partner Don Howard discuss this persistent “starvation cycle,” and suggest ways to stop it.
(Bridgespan Group, Ann Goggins Gregory, Daniel Stid)
As government and nonprofit groups collaborate more closely, it's time for government at all levels to examine how to channel more money to high-performance organizations that deliver results, and finance nonprofits in ways that preserve and enhance their effectiveness.
Using Strategic Planning to Increase the Impact of Advocacy
(Bridgespan Group, Samantha Levine, Alan Tuck, Allana Jackson)
Following a number of high-profile successes, The Justice Project was awash in opportunities to effect positive change in the criminal justice system. Its leaders, however, were concerned that the organization was in danger of spreading itself too thin. To help clarify which options to pursue, they engaged in the organization’s first formal strategic-planning process.
(Bridgespan Group, Richard (Dickie) Steele)
The report "Measuring and/or Estimating Social Value Creation," published by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides a thoughtful synthesis of various approaches, each of which can help decision makers understand the relative benefits vs. cost of different programs and organizations. However, as Bridgespan Group Partner Dickie Steele notes in this commentary, it’s also important to keep in mind three overarching factors that further affect their use and applicability.
(Venture Philanthropy Partners, Mario Morino)
Morino articulates his concern that "the vast majority of funders and nonprofits are achieving, at best, marginal benefit from their efforts to implement outcomes thinking."
(Stanford Social Innovation Review, Mark Gottfredson, Steve Schaubert, & Elisabeth Babcock)
The authors identify four management principles they say are "essential for creating breakthrough performance."
(Stanford Social Innovation Review, Alana Conner Snibbe)
With funders increasing the call for "more data," nonprofit organizations often find themselves swamped in meaningless numbers. This article offers ways to ensure that what gets measured actually matters.
(Stanford Social Innovation Review, Laura Silverstein & Erin J. Maher)
It's not easy being a small, innovative nonprofit program—especially if you're being overburdened with accountability initiatives