Mind the Gap
Stronger ties between academic evaluators and social innovators would hugely benefit both sides.
Measurement & Evaluation - Most Popular
New ways to measure and evaluate the impact an organization’s work has on society (more)
Nonprofits
Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries
The views of those who benefit from social programs offer insight into a program’s effectiveness.
Assessing Advocacy
Grantmakers can use a quantitative framework to help them decide which advocacy programs to invest in, and advocacy organizations can use it to determine which approaches might be most effective.
Indexing Nonprofits
Donors want their money to be spent wisely, but knowing where to give can be difficult.
A First Step for Ed Reform: Getting the Metrics Right
Many programs targeting low-performing students rely on data that doesn’t indicate a real understanding of impact on students’ lives.
Measuring Impact Through Field Experiments
It is important to remember that while all this studying is great, innovators should place a higher priority on helping people when some program or product is effective.
How to Ask the Right Questions
Who is the target population for a microcredit intervention? Your answer will depend largely on where you sit: Academics and microfinance institutions will be interested in different groups of people.
Measuring Impact Over Time
It is perhaps no coincidence that the development community’s biggest successes—eradication initiatives like polio and smallpox—are precisely the ones that made monitoring central to their work.
The Mismeasure of Impact
Data scientists and information economists are beginning to pair with social innovators to understand the dynamics of interventions and to separate what works from what doesn’t.
What Obama’s Campaign Can Teach Nonprofits About Measurement
Five measurement practices that Obama’s campaign and high-performing nonprofits have in common.