Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning
Creating Tools to Guide Nonprofits and Philanthropy Toward Their Goals
Measurement is an important topic for funders who want to know how their money is spent, for nonprofits and NGOs that want to show their programs work, and for impact investors committed to financial and social returns. Measurement, however, isn’t just a yardstick for success, it's a tool for learning and decision making that leads to better performance. As such, it aids strategic clarity, facilitates equity and inclusion, and validates innovation.
We tailor our approach to nonprofit measurement and evaluation to meet the specific needs of every client, guiding and gauging progress toward their ambitious goals.
“SHOFCO worked with the Bridgespan team in Johannesburg to design a 5-year strategic plan that expands the SHOFCO Urban Network (SUN) community organizing platform towards a goal of one million slum residents, or, the critical mass necessary to achieve urban slum transformation across Kenya. This new strategic plan put an emphasis on SHOFCO's community organizing work (versus SHOFCO's long track record in service delivery), and pushed us to think creatively about how to develop a comprehensive M&E framework that substantiates systemic change at a slum-level and nationwide.”
Elise Garrity
Chief of Staff, SHOFCO
Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO) is a Kenyan grassroots movement that catalyzes large-scale transformation in urban informal settlements where inhabitants have inadequate housing and basic services—“slums,” as the United Nations calls them. SHOFCO provides critical services for all, community advocacy platforms, and education and leadership development for women and girls. Bridgespan helped to articulate SHOFCO’s new vision for transforming those settlements, centered on scaling its community organizing platform to enable one million residents of 20 urban slums across Kenya to shape their agenda and hold stakeholders to account in meeting their needs. We helped to translate this new vision into a strategic measurement and evaluation framework that will help SHOFCO track and manage progress toward its goals.
"We worked with Bridgespan in 2015 to design a five-year plan for growth that built on our core equities but allowed us to expand our impact in dramatic ways. It went so well that we re-engaged with their team this year to evaluate our work, setting the stage for our next period of growth and impact."
Rick Singer
Former President & CEO of TGR Foundation, A Tiger Woods Charity
TGR Foundation seeks to empower underserved students to pursue their passions through education. The foundation engaged Bridgespan to help steer decisions around if and how it might change practices to maximize impact. We worked with the foundation to write a five-year operational plan containing strategic priorities, funding plans, milestones, and a learning agenda. We also identified performance measurement metrics to track intermediate outcomes and key performance indicators. The foundation used the measurement metrics to experiment and adapt its programs to better meet the needs of its students.
“Bridgespan's work is practical, execution-oriented, and courageous. I believe their contributions to The Rise Fund will advance the field of impact investing and our collective desire to measure and manage towards greater impact.”
Maya Chorengel
Senior Partner, The Rise Fund
The Rise Fund was launched in 2016 as a $1 billion impact fund managed by TPG Growth. Rise engaged Bridgespan to ensure that impact remained at the forefront of its investments. Working together, we developed a data-driven approach and framework to project anticipated social or environmental impact before closing on an investment. Rise has used this new methodology to invest more than $1 billion in 30 companies, 15 in emerging markets. It closed the first fund at $2 billion and has announced a second impact fund.
Examples of Nonprofits, Philanthropy and Impact Investor Clients We Have Worked With
Nonprofits:
Foundations:
Impact Investors:
