By Jill Friedman Fixler and Jennifer Rackow
If you share our drive to strengthen non-profit organizations, you probably also share a sense that your organization's volunteers and staff members are "doing good work. " But how do you know the differences your programs, services, and volunteers make? How do you prove it to current and potential donors and volunteers? They want to know what their time, effort, and money changes. How can you use this information to tell the whole story about the impact of volunteer engagement to your stakeholders?
Whenever you hear results that consist only of the numbers, try asking one provocative question: ... "So what?" ... Non-profit leaders, including staff and board members, too often get the following type of information in briefings or annual reports:
"5,871 volunteers put in 48,729.3 hours this quarter; that's an average of 8.3 hours per volunteer, a 1.1% increase over this time last year. "
While those statistics - we call them the "Yield" - are useful to collect, they do not reveal the impact the agency and its volunteers are creating. Essential "So what?" questions include:
- "What did those 5,871 people accomplish?" (Hours are not an accomplishment by themselves!)
- "What changed in the lives of the people they served because of their efforts?"
- "How do you know?"
Measuring Performance
Welcome to performance measurement, also known as "outcomes based assessment. " We have developed a simple way (yes, simple!) of strategically aligning volunteer efforts with desired results, and then collecting the data to demonstrate progress and accomplishment.
We use a logic model with a complementary report for easy communication of progress and challenges. Logic models are often visually represented as linear: one element leads logically to the other, left to right on the page. The names of logic model elements vary. In some logic models, what we label "vision" might be called the "problem", "challenge", or "goal. " The intent is always the same: show how the effort expended leads to the desired results. Here is our version, with each element defined below:
Vision: Defines the challenge at hand and the purpose and meaning of the entire plan.
Resources: What specific training, supplies, time, funding, and expertise do you need to have or develop before the action can occur?
Action: What activities need to happen? HINT: Add how many, with whom, when, and who convenes and attends, but resist the temptation to describe how they will happen.
Yield: Quantifiable results of the action, answering: How many-? What percentage-? How much-?
Initial Impact: Short term results that show what is different - often changes in knowledge, skills, abilities, attitude, behavior, or decision-making; these changes often address the most visible manifestations of the problem.
Sustained Outcome: Long-term, lasting results; these impacts often address deeper roots of the challenge at hand, and are changes in condition - economic, physical, social, or political. They may create or significantly alter models of doing business and will demonstrate the return on investment in volunteer engagement to all stakeholders.
For every vision, create a Work Plan: A simple chart to lay out each element, in order. Colleagues working on disparate pieces will understand how each contributes to the system; the process is transparent; and multiple people can "logic check" the plan.
For the initial impacts and sustained outcomes, set Indicators: Specific, measurable, observable characteristics or changes that represent the achievement of an initial impact or sustained outcome. This is how you know if you're there- or at least getting there!
To give teams the chance to communicate along the way, use a Progress Report: A view of the work plan and indicators with a blank column for recording progress. You can set dates for accomplishments, avoid being surprised by progress or problems and intervene early when needed, and track accomplishments for replication and building future plans.
The linear model is easier to draw, but the system of performance measurement is actually circular. The sustainable outcome fulfills the vision, and often leads to a new vision and subsequent results. The cycle spirals upward.
The Story of Change
When we hear, "Our volunteer program isn't valued," we look at where the program is positioned in the organization, and we ask what the program accomplishes. We also introduce performance measurement to our clients so that they capture and learn to tell the whole story. Usually people stop their volunteer engagement story long before they get to the real changes that their work brings about.
In our work we find that most clients already plan, implement, and monitor Resources, Action, and Yield very well. Creating a compelling vision, and then following the yield with measurable changes (impacts and outcomes) is where we spend the bulk of our time in consultation and training. We encourage staff-volunteer teams to spend energy on planning for results that can be evaluated, measured, and used to build organizational capacity.
Once the team has those results, a very engaging story emerges; that story elevates the conversation from "doing stuff" or "getting through it" to powerful, demonstrable results. Participants share a commitment to a specific vision for their engagement, understand why and to whom their engagement matters, and can evaluate whether the purpose of their engagement has been fulfilled.
Successful staff-volunteer partnerships - those that consistently achieve measurable results - have powerful impacts on both the community and the organization itself. ... Use the impacts of your volunteer program in strategic planning and staff performance appraisals and witness how results-oriented volunteer engagement standards bring accountability to your board, staff, and volunteers.
Feature the impacts of your volunteer program in annual reports, marketing, and fundraising campaigns, and watch your story transform into an invitation for others to become volunteers, donors, event participants, and future organization leaders. Through a compelling story, you can position your organization's volunteer program as the means to fulfill many high priority strategic needs.
BREAKING NEWS
JFFixler & Associates has been awarded a Boomers Leading change Innovation grant by the Rose Community Foundation in Denver, Colorado to support the creation of The Boomer Civic Engagement Handbook: a Guide for Accessing Abundant Resources.
This step-by-step guidebook co-written with Sandie Eichberg, will show nonprofit leaders how to utilize the resource of 55+ plus volunteers for social benefit. ... The Rose Community Foundation is one of 30 community foundations participating in the Community Experience Partnership, a national initiative of The Atlantic Philanthropies.
The Boomer Innovation Grants program is part of the Boomers Leading Change initiative, which is working to expand opportunities for baby boomers to live meaningful and productive lives in their 60's and beyond. ... The Boomer Civic Engagement Handbook is scheduled to be published in 2008.
TIPS to Incorporate Performance Measurement into Your Volunteer Program
- Develop performance measures with a team that includes staff and volunteers.
- Collaborate with your beneficiaries and community partners. They may be required to measurnversations about the results you seek, volunteers will draw from their skills and experiences and offer exciting possibilities to help you reach your goals.
RELATED RESOURCES
Free Management Library:... A complete Integrated Online Library for Non-profit and For-profit or Organizations
Click here to read, Performance Measurement: Guides, Myths, and Examples by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD
JUST A THOUGHT
"The process of succeeding can be seen as a series of trials in which your vision constantly guides you toward your target while in your actual performance you are regularly slightly off target.... Success in any area requires constantly readjusting your behavior as the result of feedback from your experience."
(Michael Gelb & Tony Buzan)"A fellow doesn't last long on what he has done.... He has to keep on delivering." (Elbert Hubbard)
"I takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
