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Comment by russell | Hacker News Reader

I take his essay to mean that, if you want results, measure results and hold them to it. Chess experts are experts because they are measured by their results. Political pundits are hit hit or miss because they are not held accountable for their results. Non-profits should be measured by their results, not their process, PR, or grants. Makes sense to me, but quantifiable results are often hard to get, witness the discussions here about how to to tell goo programmers from bad.

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Having worked extensively with not for profits, the biggest problem is the lack of accountability - this has as much to do with governance as metrics. Managers often have a say in the appointment of board members whereas at least power ultimately rests in shareholders in for profits. Then there's the problem of changing missions - take the number of family foundations that would have their original benefactors appalled (e.g. Ford, Rockefeller, etc.)

And then another problem with metrics is that there has to be a cost benefit at some point. Obviously some are better than others, but if the cost to measure is as much to achieve, is it worth it? Though this may say as much about the mission as it does about the metric (microfinance is an area where this debate is raging).

microfinance is an area where this debate is raging

Can you show me where?

Google "commercialization" and "microfinance" - a debate that's directly related to "social metrics"/"social impact" - you should find a number of forums (consolidated at nabble; but there are also a number of articles that you can find at USAID funded http://www.microfinancegateway.org/)

How do you measure the "results" of a non-profit, when most of them work in non-quantifiable fields?

You end up with the quantity versus quality argument, favoring large, superficial efforts over narrowly tailored, substantive efforts.

How do you measure the "results" of a non-profit, when most of them work in non-quantifiable fields?

If McDonalds can work out how to quantify feeding hungry people then any charity working in Africa should be able to quantify feeding hungry people. If an insurance company can tell me the average lifespan of their clients to six decimal places and what exactly the risk factors are among that pool, then health-focused charities should be able to do it as well. etc, etc

(I have some familiarity with the literature and know the excuses for why charities operating in Africa with mobile phones and computers can't be expected to have as good a handle on their numbers as a British bank circa 1780. Yeah yeah, it must be difficult when you rely on globally distributed workers, many of whom are not literate. Oh wait, so does McDonalds.)

I've been involved with a couple of music/culture related 501-c3 non-profits that had very quantifiable results: class enrollments, ticket sales, sales of music CDs, and awards won by participants in international competitions.

I would say that both of them do extremely well in the non-quantifiable quality department as well.

The Gates Foundation has been doing some research regarding this, you can find it here.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/december-2008-...

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