Measuring Non-Profit Performance
The Urban Institute and The Center for What Works,
The USA's Urban Institute and its project partner, The Center for What Works, collaborated from June 2004 through May 2006 to identify a set of common outcomes and outcome indicators or 'common framework' in the measurement of performance for non-profits: Building a Common Outcome Framework To Measure Non-Profit Performance.
The aim was to avoid non-profits with multiple projects and multiple funders having to deal with different requirements for tracking outcomes for similar programs.
The idea was that if agreement on a common core set of outcome indicators can be reached, then outcome reporting can be efficient and focused. (These aims are similar to New Zealand's own Funding For Outcomes Initiative and the work done to introduce integrated contracts.)
The report from the US provides suggested core indicators for 14 categories of non-profit organisations and then expands the notion of common core indicators to a much wider variety of programmes by suggesting a common framework of outcome indicators for all non-profit programmes.
The full report is available as a free PDF from www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411404.
Source: NGO Desk Update 23 February 2007.