At its worst, program evaluation is a useless activity that generates lots of boring data and irrelevant conclusions. But at its best, argues Mark Kramer in a talk he gave at the 2008 Nonprofit Management Institute, it can be a strategic tool for the genuine improvement of a nonprofit. He offers exemplars of organizations that have used evaluation effectively to advance their missions.
Why Kiva chose to be a 501(c)(3), what this tax status buys the organization, and how being a nonprofit poses challenges.
Social innovation now has an official place in the White House.
RAMP nurtures local inventors in India, Peru, and Indonesia.
Investors screen for entrepreneurial passion when making funding decisions.
Funders are calling for more program evaluation, but nonprofits are often collecting dubious data, at great cost to themselves and ultimately to the people they serve.
Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations.
For NGOs, impact comes in different forms and to track the cycles of social change work, we must think across the tangibility and the speed of emergence of change.
With an understanding of these 10 funding models, nonprofit leaders can use the for-profit world's valuable practice of engaging in succinct and clear conversations about long-term financial strategy.
Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention, but along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does.
