The basic idea is that not everyone needs to measure impact
Quantifying performance and measuring results are no longer the sole domain of for-profit enterprises.
Today, many nonprofit organizations also find themselves on the hot seat—not with stockholders but with donors who expect similar levels of accountability to show how their money was spent and what that spending achieved. Yet there has been little agreement on a set of hard-and-fast metrics to measure social performance. How should a nonprofit manager respond when a significant donor asks for proof of his or her contribution's impact on a particular social issue?
"They're major players by virtue of their scale and the scope of their activities, and in some communities they have been the only consistent service providers in a generation," he observes. "They can assess their performance much further down the logic chain due to their relatively high degree of control and the length of their involvement in the same communities."
This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.