Charity Navigator
How to Use Real Performance Data to Raise More Money
A big topic of conversation lately has been whether donors really care about impact, or whether they simply just give based on less scientific things like their emotions, or their friends recommendations. Which is why I’m excited to announce that I’ll be participating in a Google Hangout April 30th about using data to attract donors.
Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Tim Ogden claims that donors have never really been interested in impact. And Ken Berger from Charity Navigator and William Schambra of the Hudson Institute debate (here and here) whether moving the nonprofit sector toward performance management helps or hurts social change efforts.
To add to this conversation, David Henderson and I are hosting a Google Hangout, “How to Use Real Performance Data to Raise More Money,” on Tuesday, April 30th at 2pm Eastern. David is a super smart guy who runs Idealistics, a consultancy that helps nonprofits learn from their outcomes data, increase impact, and demonstrate results to funders and stakeholders. David’s professional focus is on improving the way social sector organizations use information to implement higher impact poverty interventions. He has been quoted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and has written for Change.org and the Huffington Post. You can read my interview with him from a year and a half ago here.
David and I thought it would be interesting to host a conversation with nonprofit leaders about how nonprofits can use real performance data to raise more money. We’ll kick off the hour-long conversation with a couple of points and a case study or two of nonprofits that are using data to raise more money, but then we’ll open it up to you for questions. You can send us your questions ahead of time (via email to nell@socialvelocity.net or dhenderson@idealistics.org) or simply post them to the Google Hangout here as you watch.
I hope you’ll join us!
How to Use Real Performance Data to Raise More Money
A Google Hangout with David Henderson and Nell Edgington
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
2pm Eastern
Can nonprofits that use real performance data to raise more money? Are donor increasingly interested in impact data? How can nonprofits communicate their program data to donors? And how should nonprofits respond to questionable performance claims by other organizations? Join David Henderson from Idealistics and Nell Edgington from Social Velocity in a Google Hangout on Tuesday, April 30th at 2pm Eastern to discuss these and many more questions about how nonprofits can use real data to raise more money. We’d love to have you participate in the discussion, so send your questions ahead of time to Nell or David, or leave a comment at the Google Hangout here.
Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013
How Do We Measure Nonprofit Effectiveness?
There is something exciting happening around measuring the value that nonprofits create. Several new efforts are underway to create a system for measuring and comparing how effective nonprofits are.
Just a few years ago, the only measure for a nonprofit’s effectiveness was the percent they spent on overhead expenses. If a nonprofit spent a magic 20% or less on non-program expenses they were deemed worthy of donations. This destructive way of evaluating nonprofit organizations has been losing favor over the last few years as rating agencies like Charity Navigator have recognized the need for a broader evaluation of nonprofit effectiveness. New measures have started to include outcome and impact elements.
But all of this begs the ultimate question which is how do we create a system for measuring and comparing nonprofits across the many social issues and operating models that make up the sector? Because however faulty the overhead percentage measurement was, at least it allowed a comparison of apples to apples. You could see how one nonprofit stacked up against another. But if each nonprofit organization is now creating their own theory of change, and their own outcome and impact measurements, how do we compare those to another nonprofit’s outcome and impact measures?
Enter a host of efforts to solve that very problem. One of these efforts is Markets for Good. They aim to create an infrastructure for evaluating nonprofit effectiveness based on outcomes and impact. You can watch their video explaining their efforts below, or if you are reading this in an email click here to watch the video.
And there are many other efforts to move the nonprofit sector toward measuring outcomes instead of spending practices. These include Idealistics, GiveWell, Philanthropedia among many others. But it’s not clear yet how any of these efforts will be able to analyze and compare the effectiveness of social change efforts because there are many pieces to that puzzle.
To truly be able to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of social change efforts, we have to:
- Encourage nonprofit organizations to develop a theory of change, because you can’t measure whether an organization has created change if they have no idea what they are trying to change in the first place.
- Give nonprofits resources with which to measure whether their theory of change is actually coming to fruition. Measuring outcomes and impact takes time and money.
- Separate a single nonprofit’s efforts to create change from other forces working on the same social problem so that we can understand the effectiveness of a single organization.
- Create a standardized system for comparing the ability of one nonprofit organization to create change to another’s ability to create change.
- Connect such a system for measuring nonprofit effectiveness to systems already being created for for-profit social entrepreneurs (like GIIRS) so that those with money to invest in social change efforts can compare the social return they would get in a for-profit and/or nonprofit setting.
- Communicate the results of those measures to philanthropic and social investors so they can make more informed, more results-focused investments, whether those be to nonprofit or for-profit social change organizations.
To me, comparing the ability of organizations to create social change is an enormous nut to crack. But it is an incredibly worthy endeavor. I applaud Markets for Good and the many other efforts working to create a system for understanding and comparing social change efforts. It will be fascinating to watch this space develop.
Photo Credit: KJGarbutt
The View from an “Old” Social Enterprise: An Interview with Jim Gibbons
In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Jim Gibbons, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International. Goodwill is such an interesting case because the organization has been practicing social entrepreneurship since long before it became cool, which I’ve talked about before. Goodwill started in 1902 in Boston and in 2010 provided jobs and job training to 2.4 million people with a budget of $4 billion. Gibbons earned his B.S. in industrial engineering from Purdue University, and a M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where he was the first blind person to graduate with a master’s in business administration.
You also can read past interviews in our Social Innovation Interview Series here.
Nell: Goodwill has employed a social enterprise model for over a century, long before social entrepreneurship was a buzzword. What made Goodwill so forward-thinking?
Jim: Goodwill is often referred to as “the original social enterprise” particularly by leading social entrepreneurs in the field such as Jim Fruchterman. Goodwill’s roots are deeply established in the belief of the human potential of dignity and self-sufficiency, and in an early learning that the people we serve want a “hand up, not a hand out.” Our founder, Reverend Edgar J. Helms, engrained in our culture his strongly held belief that we must challenge the status quo and be “dissatisfied until every person with a disability or disadvantage has an opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.” This drives the entrepreneurial spirit that exists at every independent, community-based Goodwill agency, allowing them to continually adapt and reinvent themselves in order to meet the needs of local communities.
Nell: How do you think an “old-fashioned” nonprofit like Goodwill fits into this growing social innovation movement? How do you make sure Goodwill is part of that movement and doesn’t get left behind?
Jim: The Goodwill brand is a household name and fortunately still leads efforts in social entrepreneurism, community collaborations and innovation. By staying ahead of the curve, we don’t fall behind. Goodwills are relentless in their desire to understand and meet the needs of the diverse local communities in which they operate. Goodwills challenge themselves to remain relevant and meaningful to the three million people we collectively serve each year. Goodwills across the United States and Canada have found the sweet spot of uniting enterprise with caring, ensuring that our social enterprise model is optimized in a way that empowers people and builds communities that work.
Nell: Goodwill has many more competitors these days than it did 10 years ago, particularly from for-profit competitors. How do you manage the competitive landscape and is it having a negative effect on your model?
Jim: As a market leader in this space, Goodwill always keeps its eye on external forces. We use our social enterprise model to advance millions of people who might not otherwise have the tools or help to succeed in life. We admire legitimate and credible nonprofits that leverage similar models to achieve their mission. While we do not condone the practices of those who market themselves to the public as something they are not, we welcome fair and honest competition, as we have earned the trust and support of more than 66 million customers as well as the people we serve every day. Goodwill earns the trust of shoppers by providing excellent value for their hard earned money. In addition, we earn the trust of donors through the assurance that we maximize the value of their donations in order to return the most benefit to the people we serve in local communities. At Goodwill, your donations generate opportunities for people to achieve economic stability, and build strong families and vibrant communities by offering job training, employment placement services and other community-based programs, such as financial education and youth mentoring. In addition, 84 percent of Goodwill’s revenues go directly into these programs, so members of the public can be sure that their donation(s) will have a direct impact on the people in your community. Last year, Goodwill’s retail enterprise revenues grew more than 12.5 percent, indicating that the public, even with increased for-profit competition, still values and trusts Goodwill.
In addition, we plan to remain a market leader through responsible community leadership. Across the United States and in Canada, we are working with municipalities and local governments to ensure that misleading donation bins are clearly marked so that the public is aware of whether or not their donations go to help someone in need, or if they simply add to a company’s profits. We also teach donors to check out a charity’s legitimacy and revenue information about overhead and administrative costs by contacting their attorney general or secretary of state’s office, a charity rating agency such as Charity Navigator or GuideStar, or online resources such as GreatNonprofits or Philanthropedia.
Nell: What do you do at Goodwill to continually innovate and reinvent the model? How is it possible to continue to innovate at a 100+ year old organization?
Jim: It’s not only possible to innovate, it’s necessary if we want to remain a leader in our market. At Goodwill, we don’t think of innovation as the creation of the next iPhone, but rather as the next idea that allows us to serve the communities we’re a part of in the most meaningful and impactful way. For example, at the Goodwill Industries of South Florida (Miami), they innovate every day and put thousands of people with disabilities back to work. People with disabilities enrolled in their programs learn apparel manufacturing, flag manufacturing, document destruction, and janitorial services. The Goodwill offers a broad range of flexible business solutions to private and public companies, while helping their employees achieve their independence. And it doesn’t stop there. We are committed to customizing the assistance workers need to achieve their peak performance, and we encourage them to continue to advance in their careers.
In Winston-Salem, NC, and Eugene, OR, (Goodwill Industries of Lane and South Coast Counties), we deploy ’Prosperity Centers’ that optimize community resources and drive community collaboration for the benefit of the people. Prosperity Centers are dedicated to assisting people in the community to succeed financially. That doesn’t just mean helping workers find jobs; it means giving them all the tools they need to build financial security and independence once they have a job, including resume-writing assistance, skills assessment, career counseling, access to computer and high-speed internet, and help with interviewing skills and financial counseling. At each of these centers, financial professionals talk to participants about their financial goals, and help them come up with a personal plan to meet those goals, whether that’s regularly paying their bills on time, reducing personal debt, starting savings to go to school, or investing in a big purchase like a car or home. With like-minded agencies partnering together, they are able to harness their resources, eliminate redundancies, strengthen their impact, focus the delivery of their services to meet the needs of local communities, and have a meaningful impact on their citizens.
At the San Francisco Goodwill, we’ve deployed the “Back On Track” program. A partnership with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the Family Services Agency, “Back On Track” provides intensive case management to individuals who have been arrested for a non-violent, first-time drug sale felony. Goodwill provides job readiness workshops, case management, career advising, life skills workshops and job training and education placement. For every individual we train, we save the government an estimated $20,000 in jail/prison costs. This program has a less than 10 percent recidivism rate – compared to a 75 percent rate with other programs.
In Cincinnati, the Ohio Valley Goodwill Industries, paves an example for other service organizations that provide services to veterans. One hundred percent of the veterans they serve are homeless, and many have physical disabilities or mental health issues such as PTSD and TBI. Each veteran has a case manager who works with him or her to develop an individualized program plan. The Goodwill provides transitional housing for these veterans and strives to provide services to them in a holistic manner in order to achiever lasting success, a return to family, community and self-sufficient living. All of these innovative examples are shared across the Goodwill network, and modified and adapted to best meet the needs of local communities.
Nell: Goodwill is pretty active in the social media space and in fact you do a fair bit of Tweeting yourself (@jdgibbons). How have you integrated social media into your mission? What does it allow you to do?
Jim: Goodwill is a networked enterprise where the local Goodwills make up the heart and soul of the brand, and they participate in social media with aligned brand messages that communicate their local activities and impact. We’ve integrated social media into our global and national communication strategies in a powerful way because it’s an awesome tool for educating people about our brand. And we’re giving attention to having real conversations at the level that is important to our stakeholders and builds relationships with them.
Nell: You were recently appointed by President Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which is a pretty interesting group working on bringing the public, private and nonprofit sectors together to solve problems. What is that group working on and what results are you seeing so far?
Jim: It’s exciting to work with a group of leaders from a variety of sectors to raise awareness on how collaborations solve problems in a profound way. Recently, the Council announced its commitment to expand job opportunities for youth through the White House Summer Jobs+ initiative. The initiative is a call-to-action for businesses, nonprofits and the government to provide opportunities for youth to obtain life skills, education, training, and social supports that are relevant for long-term employment, and to work together to provide pathways to employment for youth ages 16-24 (referred to as ‘opportunity youth’) who are low-income or face disadvantages to finding employment and related opportunities.
Goodwill will be supporting the Summer Jobs+ program by hiring 1,200 youth ages 16 to 24. Goodwills across the country will also provide more than 3,200 youth with life skills services, including communications, time management and teamwork; more than 2,300 youth will receive work skills services. In addition, 2,000 youth will be provided learn and earn opportunities, where they will gain the ability to acquire their first paid employment position, either through the form of paid internships or permanent positions that provide on-the-job training at Goodwill locations. Thousands of additional youth will also be provided with virtual career mentoring and exploration services.
The Summer Jobs+ initiative was created in response to research that shows that at least one in six young people ages 16-24 are disconnected from the two systems that offer the greatest hope for their future: school and work.
Unlocking Philanthropic Capital: An Interview with Sean Stannard-Stockton
In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we are talking with Sean Stannard-Stockton, one of my favorite people in the social innovation world.
Sean is a visionary leading the charge to transform philanthropy. He is CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, a philanthropy advisory firm. He is also the author of the very popular Tactical Philanthropy blog and writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing and his insights on philanthropy have been referenced in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Financial Times.
You can read our past interviews with Clara Miller, Kevin Jones, Lucy Bernholz, Paul Tarini, George Overholser.
Nell: At the first Social Capital Markets Conference (SoCap) in 2008 one of the keynoters said “we’re not here to talk about nonprofits.” We’ve come a long way from there to this year’s devoted track around philanthropic capital and the nonprofit space at SoCap. Where do you think the initial hesitance to connect philanthropic and impact investing came from? And how do we continue to integrate the two worlds?
Sean: I think that one of the segments of people who are attracted to impact investing are people who think philanthropy doesn’t work. While I view philanthropic and for-profit social capital to be part of a single continuum of capital, many people seem to feel that they are fundamentally different. Like most new ideas, early adopters often think it is a silver bullet that will “change everything”. Some early adopters of impact investing or other forms of for-profit social capital wrongly believe that impact investing will replace philanthropy. I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Continuing to integrate the two worlds will require helping the various points on the capital spectrum better understand each other. At the end of the day, capital shouldn’t be viewed through an ideological lens, but should simply be deployed based on what sort of capital fits the situation.
Nell: The SoCap session on nonprofit rating systems like Charity Navigator and GiveWell demonstrated that there is still quite a divide between GIIRS (the impact investing rating system) and nonprofit rating systems. What is your sense of this? Do you think there is potential to somehow combine GIIRS (or something else) and nonprofit rating systems so that there is one comparable impact measurement system?
Sean: I would guess that any truly effective impact measurement system should be functional across both for-profit and nonprofit activity. A good impact assessment system wouldn’t care about the tax status of the entity producing results, it would just care about the results and the cost of obtaining them. That being said, I think evaluating a nonprofit organization is really quite different from evaluating a for-profit organization. So even if we have a unified impact assessment framework some day, I would guess that organizational assessment will utilize different systems and approaches for nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
Nell: How would you like to see the conversation about connecting philanthropy and impact investing evolve at SoCap11? What are your hopes for next year’s conference?
Sean: I’d like to work to profile more examples of ways that for-profit and philanthropic capital worked together to produce social impact. Our session on Evergreen Lodge at this year’s conference looked precisely at this question, but I’d like to see more examples. I’d also like to see examples of ways philanthropic entities have used for-profit investments or subsidiaries well or for-profits have effectively used philanthropic activities to drive profit and social results. However, one of the most important goals is simply getting the different players into the same room and getting them to come to understand each other better. While Kevin Jones and I had a good time talking about the Social Capital Markets as a meeting ground for the Barbarians and Byzantine, in reality none of us are barbarians.
Nell: Beyond SoCap where do you think the important conversations about unlocking philanthropic and government capital for social impact are happening?
Sean: This is an interesting question. SoCap is special because it is one of the only (the only?) conference that is specifically about capital for social impact without regard for sector. But versions of this conversation are happening around Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, The Social Innovation Fund, online and in a different sort of way at the PopTech conference.
Nell: At the last general session of SoCap Woody Tasch of the Slow Money movement said he doesn’t think mission-related investing will ever be adopted by the majority of foundations. What are your thoughts on that?
Sean: Social Responsible Investing, the practice of screening out stocks of tobacco companies, defense contractors and the like from investment portfolios, is not practiced by a majority of investors. Yet, SRI is very mainstream and has significantly altered the behavior of publicly traded companies. Today, SRI mutual funds are one of the fastest growing areas in money management. So I don’t think that the majority of funders have to adopt mission related investing for the concept to be deemed a success. It should be noted that SRI took a good 20 years or so to go mainstream. So it could be some time before mission related investing is considering mainstream.
Nell: And more broadly, what do you think it will take to change how philanthropists (both foundations and individual donors) use money to support social impact? How do we make more donors builders instead of just buyers?
Sean: Today, I think that very few people in the social sector really understand what “philanthropic equity” is and how capital differs from revenue. Nonprofit accounting does not acknowledge that capital even exists in the sector. Nonprofits can only book cash coming into their business as revenue or a loan. There’s no official way to account for equity-like capital. So I think that there needs to be a pretty major education effort to get the whole sector very clear on how fundamentally different it is for a funder/donor to “invest” philanthropic equity in a nonprofit vs paying a nonprofit revenue to execute programs. Personally, I don’t think much progress will be made until nonprofit accounting changes. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter much what we call “growth capital”, it is all just revenue to the nonprofit.
Socap Day 2: Unlocking the Nonprofit Capital Space
Day 2 of SoCap was by far my favorite. It started with an interesting keynote from Julie Sunderland of the Gates Foundation. She offered a perhaps more realistic, bordering on the pessimistic, view of the social capital market space. She said that Gates struggles to find entities that can absorb the size investments they want to make. They get excited about the idea of bringing together foundation, government and private dollars in stacked deals, but that the work is complicated and hard and they have yet to craft one of these deals simply because it is extremely difficult to determine the terms. All of this underlines what I’ve said in a previous post: in the nonprofit, philanthropic and government worlds there is still much work to be done to unlock capital.
The first session of the day for me was “Lessons of Behavioral Finance: Understanding and Overcoming Barriers to Impact Investing” with Hope Neighbor and her ground-breaking research, Money for Good, released earlier this year calculating a $120 billion pool of potential impact investing money that is sitting on the sidelines. Hope said that despite our desires to the contrary, people still very much think of their charitable giving as separate from their impact investing, “the reality is that people compartmentalize their money.” And only 3% of the population uses data to compare the organizations they give to.
My favorite session of the day, by far, was “Deep Dive Into the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative.” This session was exactly what I was hoping to see more of at SoCap this year. A group of leaders in Cleveland realized that the heart of their city was quickly deteriorating and no one was doing anything about it. They formed a coalition of the anchor institutions in Cleveland (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, etc), foundations, city leaders and others to create the Evergreen Cooperatives that brings career-track jobs and green, employee-owned businesses to the inner city, transforming a city that has lost 50% of its population in the last 50 years. Beyond the fascinating coalition, business model and results this project is achieving, lies its impressive financing. A combination of bonds, foundation grants, loans, HUD money and others launched this project and financed the 3 businesses they currently operate (a green laundry, an organic greenhouse, and a solar power company). According to Evergreen leaders, “Cleveland wants to be where the world is going, not where the world is.”
To scale this project to create 5,000 jobs (the area needs 46,000 jobs), which will be the impetus to truly transform the inner city economy, they are creating a CDFI and looking to use PRIs and MRIs. What excites me so much about this project is not the spirit of collaboration and tremendous results, but how they are bringing public, private and philanthropic money together in a truly innovative convergence. THIS is the kind of social capital market I’m talking about. Impact investing is great, but it is only ONE piece of the puzzle. I would love to see more examples like Evergreen at SoCap.
The last breakout session I attended for the day was “Nonprofit Analysis: Beyond Metrics,” which gave a great overview of the growing nonprofit evaluators market through the lens of rating one nonprofit, DC Central Kitchen. It was interesting to see how Charity Navigator, the most well-known nonprofit evaluator, has evolved from a system driven purely by IRS 990 form overhead ratios to a three-pronged review including transparency and impact evaluations.
The end of the session gave me serious pause, however, when a member of the audience asked whether any of the evaluators might use the GIIRS system coming out of the impact investing world to rate nonprofit impact. Ken Berger admitted he wasn’t familiar with GIIRS and Tim Ogden of GiveWell said he was skeptical of social return on investment (SROI) calculations in general. Again, my point that the philanthropic and impact investing worlds aren’t communicating and collaborating becomes apparent. Wouldn’t that be amazing if impact in both the philanthropic and impact investing worlds could be measured in a comparable way? That would be truly innovative!
So, although Day 2 of SoCap provided much more conversation and examples of how the philanthropic and government capital markets are evolving, there is still much work to be done to bring both capital fully into the social capital market. Perhaps at SoCap 2011?
Photo Credit: Markets for Good
The Controversy: Small Nonprofits and Growth Capital
The issue of whether small and medium size nonprofits can or should raise growth capital seems to be a controversial one. Steve Goldberg, author of Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets: Why Philanthropy Doesn’t Advance Social Progress, speaker, and consultant to Charity Navigator, New Profit and other leading entities in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, took issue with my post Can’t Small Nonprofits Raise Capital Too? He believes that capacity capital, not growth capital, is right for smaller nonprofits. I, however, believe that capacity capital isn’t enough.
Steve argued:
Small nonprofits are no less deserving than larger ones, but only the larger ones can undertake the kinds of planning and demonstrate the capacity to make effective use of funding designed to enable organizations to grow by factors of 2, 3 or more over the course of several years.
Steve goes on to argue that capacity capital, not growth capital, is the way to go for smaller nonprofit organizations and that we need to expand the availability of capacity capital in the nonprofit market. While I definitely agree with that last statement, I still believe that small and medium nonprofits that have a great solution and a vision for growth should have access to growth capital to get them there, as I responded:
If there is a small organization that is providing a powerful and unique solution, shouldn’t they be able to expand that solution, not through incremental growth, which is the nonprofit norm, but by factoral growth, which growth capital allows?…Small nonprofits who have a great solution and a vision for growth don’t have the luxury of sitting around waiting for the nonprofit capital market to evolve to a place where the bottom 80% of nonprofits have access to growth capital. Second, creating a growth capital campaign doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive for smaller nonprofits. Sure they can’t afford the larger fees that Nonprofit Finance Fund might charge, but they also don’t need that kind of money to be able to grow.
You can read the whole debate here, or on Steve’s blog here.
I believe this debate is really important because it is not enough to help the largest, most successful nonprofits to reach scale. There are countless smaller nonprofit organizations whose solutions are just as critical, but lack the expertise and capital to bring them to scale. We can’t just have a top down approach. To truly transform the nonprofit capital market we have to create access to growth and capacity capital throughout the sector, wherever great ideas and strong leaders exist. Because, really, do we have time for the trickle down approach?
Photo Credit: Michael
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