Create Good Outputs for Your Nonprofit
- Ryan Brooks
- Sep 23
- 2 min read
5 Simple Guidelines for Creating Good Nonprofit Outputs
Prefer a video? Watch "What Makes a Good Output? on YouTube.
Outputs are "the things you do" as a nonprofit. They are the services you provide. Your nonprofit will need to track outputs to understand trends, forecast future needs, and tell your story to donors.
Here are five simple guidelines to follow that can help you create good outputs.
1. Clearly Define the Work You Did
A good output clearly defines the work your nonprofit does or did. It should be able to clearly describe the service you provided. For example, "provided meals", "gave financial assistance", and "helped with resumes" clearly define the work you did.
2. Be Measurable (Track Quantity)
A good output must be capable of tracking the quantity or amount of work done. This could be a number of something you provided (e.g. provided 10 meals, gave $250 in financial assistance), or it could track a "yes/no" status for individuals (e.g. attended workshop, completed resume) that can be summarized for a program (e.g. 50 resumes completed).
3. Track One Thing, Not Multiple Things
To avoid messy data, an output should track one and only one thing. For example, "helped with 25 resumes" is a good output. But, "helped with 25 resumes and job applications" would not be ideal.
Those are two distinct "things" that should be tracked separately. What if you helped with 25 resumes that were used to apply for 50 jobs? Tracking that would be tricky if you combined those into a single output.
4. Focus on the Work, Not Its Impact
Outputs should describe the work you did, not the potential benefits or outcomes the work might produce. For example, your organization helps people create resumes (the output) so that they can get jobs. Getting a job is an outcome, not an output. Anything you do to help someone get a job (e.g. help with resumes, interview prep, skills training, work clothing) are all outputs.
5. Focus on the "What," Not the "Who"
Outputs should focus on what was done, not who it was done for.
E.G. We provided work clothing to adults with disabilities.
The "What": We provided work clothing
The "Who": adults with disabilities.
While tracking your clients or community members is critical for most nonprofits, the "who" is additional information that goes along with the output, not part of the output's definition itself.
Moving Forward
start Small: review 5-10 of your nonprofit's current outputs. Do they follow the 5 guidelines? If not, how can you improve them?
Before your organization adds new outputs to track, consider these guidelines.
Does your small nonprofit struggle with data? Maybe countbubble can help.
The Standard Plan is ideal for smaller nonprofits. that are ready to upgrade past spreadsheets. countbubble's free plan is perfect for small nonprofits that aren't ready to pay for better program tracking software.
Founder, CountBubble, LLC
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