As a nonprofit leader, how do you measure the effectiveness of your organization? Do a quick search online, and you’ll get a lot of different answers. Some will say that the number of donors to your organization is a good gauge of effectiveness. Others will point to online engagement as a measure of success. Does your nonprofit have a large and growing following on social media, and do people regularly engage with your organization’s posts? Do your emails have a good open rate?
However, most of the answers you’ll get about nonprofit effectiveness will have to do with how well your organization is doing at furthering its stated mission.
Businesses tend to talk a lot about ROI—return on investment. How is the money they are investing growing their businesses in terms of increasing revenue, profits, and market share? Nonprofits can also look at ROI to determine how the donations and grants they receive are allowing them to further their mission. Unfortunately, ROI can be a bit more difficult to calculate for nonprofits. Sure, they can say, “We helped X number of people with X number of dollars,” but that doesn’t usually tell the whole story.
According to an article from Springly, nonprofits should also look at their SROI—their social return on investment. The article explains, “SROI takes into account the impact an action would have if you chose not to implement it, compared with if you choose to implement it. Another way to look at it is SROI = Tangible + Intangible Value to the Community. An example would be the number of dog beds that you provided to the shelter and how much more comfortable the dogs are.”
I work at a nonprofit organization that sends interim pastors to churches to help “right the ship.” One of our pastors may spend up to two years at a single church, but it wouldn’t tell the whole story to just say that one church was helped by one of our pastors over the course of two years. In reality, that one interim pastor impacted the hundreds of people who attend that church. The people in those churches will often say they have a deeper relationship with God as a result. Church leaders will say their churches have a renewed vision and a clear purpose as a result of our work there, and that the organizational side of their church is now running much more smoothly. These are things that you can’t quantify, but that show effectiveness, nonetheless.
Our nonprofit also engages in training potential interim pastors outside of our organization. For one week every year, we hold a training event that is open to pastors, church leaders, or anyone else interested in learning more about being an effective interim pastor. These training events allow us to greatly increase our impact by equipping individuals to carry out our mission on their own.
When communicating our nonprofit’s effectiveness to our donors, supporters, and our board of directors, it’s important to get these types of things across. Doing so often requires telling the stories of those who have been impacted by our work—how their lives have been changed and the long-term results.
Effectiveness at a nonprofit is about so much more than just numbers!
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