The Urban Institute in partnership with the World Bank Group Community Outreach Program recently released a report chronicling the evaluation experiences of four youth-serving nonprofits. Each of the four organizations participated in the East of the River Initiative, a multi-year effort to increase the capacity of agencies to assess their performance.

Regardless of whether the demand for evaluation information is created by external sources—funders, donors, the public—or internal sources—board leadership, agency management, clients—evaluation can no longer be viewed as optional or discretionary, according to the report.

At your nonprofit, are you finding evaluation to be a useful tool that helps your organization achieve goals and make strategic decisions or has your experience been different?