“Measurable outcomes” seems to have become the new mantra in the nonprofit world. Everywhere one reads about foundations seeking to measure results, applying metrics, and assessing effectiveness. The assumption seems to be that, if only we could get a stronger numerical hold on what happens as a result of nonprofit activity, akin to the bottom-line of a business investment or the hard numbers of empirical science, we could do much better at solving some of the great social problems upon which we are all so diligently working.
Let me suggest a heretical view: The fundamental business analogy is flawed. While the rhetoric sounds good, realities of social action and social change lend themselves only in a very clumsy way to the tidy world of numbers and bottom-lines. In addition to the daunting (and ultimately unsolvable) complexities of scale, multi-variables, and causal chains; there is the underlying conceptual problem of imposing reductionist interpretatations on social reality. If we look very hard, we soon see that the numbers aren’t wearing any clothes. Two very thoughtful essays that raises a number of these issues are a recent piece by Melissa Berman, “Effective Giving: Measuring What Matters,” in Linkages in Philanthropy, Winter 2003, a publication of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, and a commentary by Jan Masaoka in the SSIR: “The Effectiveness Trap,” Vol. 1, Nr. 1 www.ssireview.com.