Jason Saul

Recent Activity

• 

  Jason commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Charity's Existential Dilemma: Are We Really Making a Difference?

  These are great comments. Here are a few thoughts in response to the issues you raise:First, the notion of the “customer” has often been lost or ignored in nonprofit work.   One of the primary reasons why the sector is not functioning efficiently is because supply and demand are disconnected.  What I mean is that in the “real world” capital flows to those goods and services that consumers, who carry purchasing power, demand.  Why have there been 100 million Ipods sold but only 2 million Zunes? The rational market prevails when consumers make choices about value, and reward the firms that produce the best products or services.  But in the nonprofit sector, it’s different: “demand” for services like homeless shelters, food pantries, domestic violence counseling, etc. comes from donors, foundations and government, not the consumers or beneficiaries of the services themselves.  So the problem is that one of the most powerful metrics we can use – measuring demand – is artificially skewed.  Ideally, the money would flow to those service providers that are most highly valued by those who use them.  Instead, “demand” is proxied by funders who step into the shoes of the needy to determine which nonprofits should be rewarded. Because of this asymmetry, funders (and nonprofits) need to develop better proxies for demand. Many organizations measure customer satisfaction, but frankly, most report customer sat at 80%, so this is somewhat effete.  A better proxy for demand would be earned income revenues, % of market demand satisfied or referral rates. Easter Seals does a great job tracking these types of metrics – even going so far as to estimate what percentage of the need for disability services in a particular community that each Easter Seals affiliate meets.  Bottom line: it comes back to the fact that we are operating in a social capital market where measurement is the currency.    Second, a number of you have asked about the value of qualitative information, suggesting (correctly) that quantitative data is not dispositive.  Remember, performance data is only valuable insofar as it prompts us to ask better questions: Why did so few people complete the course? Why did our retention rate suffer last month?  Why was our cost per person served so high?  Qualitative explanations give us the answers.  So it is both that count.  But the point is that we need to put our explanations, anecdotes and stories into some context – and that’s what performance data provides.  Otherwise, we’re stuck with a bunch of random, open-ended descriptions about one organization or another with no comparative context.  Imagine if one automotive website bragged about a car – its high-performance engine, fancy on-board computer, seat heaters, etc. but had no pricing information.  The qualitative information is nice to know, but useless without some quantitative measures to help us determine value.    Finally, a number of comments inquired about the value of social science.  Don’t get me wrong: there is tremendous value to this research.  In fact, we‘d be spinning wheels (or reinventing them) daily without it.  My point is that there is a time and place for researching and proving theories of change – and this, as Paul Brest aptly points out, is primarily for think tanks, universities and research outfits like MDRC, the Consortium on Chicago School Research, and others.  When nonprofits (or foundations) hire program evaluators it rarely advances the field of understanding in social science.  It’s more what we call “CYA” (proving that the money wasn’t wasted).  Remember, proving the theory is just half the battle – the other (harder) half is effectively executing it!  That’s where measurement has its greatest value to the sector.