By Scot Kersgaard, JVA Consulting

No one starts a nonprofit without thinking about what they want to accomplish. No one takes an executive position with a nonprofit without being firmly committed to getting results. Big results. Serious results. World-changing results.

Results are why we do the work we do. There is nothing else, and there never has been.

Talking about results and believing in it are not enough. You need to be able to measure it, quantify it and prove it. For a lot of people, that is a scary fact.

A lot of nonprofits have never taken the need to measure results very seriously. They haven’t had to. That is changing.

Charity Navigator recently announced that it is adding a results component to its reporting. While there will always be individuals willing to write checks for $100 or $1000 or even more without doing much research, foundations and federal grantmakers are another story. They use every tool available to find effective programs within the pile of nice stories that land on their desks each day.

According to an October 22 article at npr.org, the nonprofit Charity Navigator, which rates thousands of nonprofits, is seriously upping the ante.

From the NPR article:

Now, Charity Navigator is planning to change its ratings system. President and CEO Ken Berger says donors deserve to know if the money they’re giving is going to programs that work.

“Think about the fact that

[in] the largest nonprofit sector in the history of the world, we do not know whether or not we’re having meaningful results and to what extent,” Berger says. “It’s not to say that they’re not having results, but they often just don’t know what the heck they are.”

And from the Charity Navigator website itself:

Why is it important that Charity Navigator add a review of each charity’s Results Reporting to its methodology? Because mission-related results are the very reason that charities exist! Effective charities have a strong focus on results and on the outcomes and impact resulting from their work. So we developed a new rating dimension that specifically examines how well charities report on their results. CN 3.0 thus further fulfills the purpose of Charity Navigator—to help charitable givers make wise decisions in choosing the charities that are most worthy of their donations.

In the NPR article, Berger asks: “How clearly do you identify the problem that you’re trying to solve, and how well do you have measures to know that you’re on the road to solving that problem?”

No one would argue that these aren’t fair questions. They may not be easy to answer, and some will say finding the answers could take resources away from the work they do. On the other hand, not answering the questions could well lead to a nonprofit’s inability to compete for funding. Just as important, it could lead to not meeting the needs of your community.

Embracing the questions and making them a key part of your own metrics will almost certainly lead to refinements that make programs stronger and more effective—and lead to continued funding.

Organizations that get on board with evaluation now will find themselves with a competitive advantage. It seems like an easy decision to make.