Before Fundraising, Focus on the Case for Evaluation
This is the third in a three part series of posts exploring the key ingredients for sustaining an organization’s evaluation capacity.
We underscored in our last post the centrality of culture and leadership in building an organization’s evaluation capacity. But sustaining evaluation capacity also depends on an organization’s ability to sell the value of their evaluation efforts to its stakeholders.
Effective evaluation depends on the engagement of numerous key stakeholders: you need staff to collect and use data; you need funders to support the costs of evaluation; and you may depend on community partners to collect and share their data that affects your outcomes. Unfortunately, a strong evaluation system alone does not automatically translate into greater support from these stakeholders. In particular, in our assessment of the funding environment for evaluation, we have learned that funders differ significantly in their views of what evaluation means, the degree to which it is valuable, and what it should cost. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Sustaining Evaluation Starts With Culture and Leadership
In our last post, we reflected on the importance of evaluation to ensuring an organization’s overall sustainability. Our question was: what can organizations do to build and sustain their evaluation capacity?
This question has been the focus of our recent work with the Connecticut Association for Housing Services (CAHS) and CASA de Maryland (CASA), two organizations that had come to recognize that evaluation capacity was about more than collecting some good data.
As Mario Morino, author of Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity, recently noted at an Urban Institute symposium, “[managing to outcomes] is about… the people and strong leadership who have the culture and desire to collect and use information as the basis for continually improving what you are doing.” Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Sustain Your Evaluation Capacity, Sustain Your Impact
This is the first in a three part series of posts that will explore the key ingredients for sustaining an organization’s evaluation capacity.
As a part of our work studying transformational initiatives, we recently had an opportunity to speak with Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), about his organization’s efforts to break the cycle of poverty in Harlem.
We were eager to learn how HCZ has managed to adapt, grow, and ultimately sustain its programs over the long term. There have undoubtedly been many keys to HCZ’s success, but Geoffrey was quick to stress one factor: Using data to drive impact is critical to achieving HCZ’s short-term and long-term goals. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Finding Courage in Nonprofit Leadership: Center for Families and Children
Every single day the CWV staff is inspired by the courage of our clients. The CWV team strives to help nonprofit and foundation leaders make decisions that are logical, strategic and based in data, but building solutions to solve social problems is not an exact science. Consequently, the most successful social sector leaders are able to take confident steps forward within a forest of ambiguity. And that takes courage.
Earlier this month I explored the courage of Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association (CVNPA). Today, I want to share the story of the Center for Families and Children, a large provider of quality family services throughout the Cleveland area with a budget of about $34M. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Why We’ll be Thinking of our Clients this Thanksgiving
Later this week, as I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with my family, I will do so with a new perspective on the things I have for which I'm grateful. That’s because I recently had the opportunity to work with the inspiring folks at Miriam’s Kitchen.
Miriam’s Kitchen has been serving homeless men and women in Washington D.C. since 1983, but recently recast its work by putting forth a bold new vision for the organization: ending chronic homelessness in Washington, D.C. This type of compelling articulation of how the world will look different is one of the common elements we have uncovered in our research on social transformation. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Learnings from a Community of Social Problem Eradicators
The Gates Foundation recently hosted a forum in Seattle with 300 scientists from around the world to release the latest information about its campaign to eradicate malaria. The lessons this community is learning and documenting during their fight to end malaria have profound takeaways for others who are waging similarly ambitious efforts to solve social problems at the scale they exist. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Finding Courage in Nonprofit Leadership: CVNPA
Much of the work we do in the social sector takes immense courage. We have to make critical decisions in an environment of ambiguity, overcoming our natural fear of the unknown. The weight of making the wrong decision – failing those who need our support the most, being wrong about our theory of change, choosing program A over program B when there is no data to support the choice – can be paralyzing for leaders of nonprofits and foundations.
Earlier this year, I explored the courage of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in sticking to bold ambitions. And, recently, the stories of two past clients stuck out to me reinforcing this idea of courage playing an important role in the DNA of successful social sector leaders.
10 Provocative Thoughts from the Independent Sector Conference (Part II)
Last week, I shared the first 5 of 10 provocative thoughts that stuck with me after this year’s Independent Sector conference. Thoughts #6 - #10 below touch on strategic planning, innovation, networks and failure:
6. “Strategic planning is dead.” That is not to say that “strategy” and/or “planning” are dead. In fact, both are absolutely necessary tools for deftly transforming limited resources (e.g., money, time, bodies) into improved social outcomes. But the good ol’ days of hammering out a trusty 5-Year Strategic Plan are quickly evaporating. Today, the pace of change is maddening. And it’s only accelerating. Day-by-day, our capacity to see into the future is declining. Organizations that plan, step-by-step, how they can best reach their goals in five years and then follow that plan, step-by-step, without looking around for five years, are going to be left in the dust. Nimbleness, foresight, adaptability, opportunism, learning, combined with strategic thinking and action planning are the traits that organizations must develop, not static strategic “planperweights.”
~ thoughtprops to: Ai-jen Poo (The National Domestic Workers Alliance)
A foundation trustee, a young nonprofit ED, and a lobbyist walk into a hotel…: 10 Provocative Thoughts from IS (Part I)
Our country is shaken. Our sector is anxious. Disparity is growing. Apathy is the norm. And we’re grasping for a new social compact.
It’s a tough time to be working in the nonprofit and philanthropic community. It’s also a thrilling time. More than ever, we need to think creatively, build innovative solutions to social problems, and grow, grow, grow what’s working. This tension between fear and fervor catapulted throughout the walls of this year’s Independent Sector conference, making for an exhilarating, poignant and provoking gathering of our nation’s top social sector thinkers and doers.
The following ideas stuck most vividly in my head. I’ve included 5 below and will include 5 more in another post next week:
1. Don’t collaborate for the sake of collaboration. Don’t collaborate just because the New York Times wrote an article about “Collective Impact.” Collaborate when the act of collaboration is a necessary ingredient in the creation of the intended results. All too often funders and grantees alike try to fit their work into the buzzword framework of the day. But frameworks by themselves do not create or guarantee positive social change. Collaboration is costly – it nearly always takes more time, energy, and money than originally planned. If the cost is $1+$1=$2.50, the social impact better be at least 1+1=2.75. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
5 Factors of Sustainability: This isn’t your grandmother’s sustainability framework.
Across the board, nonprofit organizations are on a quest for sustainability. Despite the growing interest in the topic, confusion often exists as to what sustainability for a nonprofit organization entails. For many people sustainability means one thing and one thing only: financial health.
And we can understand why, especially in this economy.
But at CWV we believe that an organization’s financial health is just one piece of its sustainability quotient. One of five, actually. Read More & Contribute Your Ideas...
Community Wealth Ventures (CWV) is a management consulting firm that emboldens and equips leadership teams to innovate, grow and sustain organizations that build a better world.
CWV offers strategy and implementation services to nonprofit organizations and philanthropic foundations, partnering with them to design and implement innovative approaches to growth and sustainability. CWV supports nonprofit sustainability through a variety of strategies, with core expertise in
social franchising and social enterprise. CWV’s collaborative approach to consulting focuses on equipping leadership teams with the skills they need to execute the strategy.
CWV is a wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary of Share Our Strength, one of the Nation's leading anti-hunger and anti-poverty organizations.