Picking Nonprofits Outcomes for Storytelling

Nonprofit Outcomes Must Help Tell Your Story

It's hard to pick good outcomes for nonprofits to track. Some outcomes seem great. But, they might require too much time or too many resources to implement. The outcomes your nonprofit tracks must be feasible to track. Filtering out infeasible outcomes is challenging, but it's manageable.

The harder task for nonprofits is creating a compelling story with their data that makes sense to donors and foundations. 

So how can nonprofits pick good outcomes for story telling?

Try using a simple 2 X 2 that allows you to place each potential outcome based on two characteristics:

1) Is it widely understood or narrowly understood? In other words, do people "get it" fairly easily, or do we have to explain it.

2) Is it objective or subjective? Are we counting dollars in a bank account or opinions and preferences?

Image 1: 2 by 2 to help nonprofits think about how to choose outcomes.

2 x 2 to help nonprofits choose outcomes to track their impact. On the vertical axis, Widely Understood (top) and Narrowly Understood (bottom). On the horizontal axis, Subjective (left) and Objective (right).Examples appear in each Quadrant. Quadrant 1: Widely Understood/Objective = Monthly Income, GPA, People Housed. Quadrant 2: Narrowly Understood/Objective = Scores on psychological assessments. Quadrant 3: Narrowly Understood/Subjective = Self-reported "affect regulation" skills. Quadrant 4: Widely Understood/Subjective = Self-Sufficiency, Feeling "safe", Living wage.

So how does this help us choose outcomes?

We can place proposed outcomes on this 2 X 2. Their location helps us understand the challenges we will face telling stories or writing grants with those measures. 

If an outcome is feasible for us to track, then we have to ask "how can we tell a story with it?"  In other words, how can we convince donors that this outcome is worth their attention and financial support?

So, here's how the 2 X 2 can help...

• Outcomes on the top-right (Widely Understood/Objective) are easier for story-telling than outcomes anywhere else.

• Outcomes in bottom left (Narrowly Understood/Subjective) are the most challenging. 

For example, measures like GPA or monthly income are easy for your audience to grasp (i.e. widely understood) and they are highly credible because they are objective.  When we use outcomes on the top right quadrant, we need less justification of our programs.

When we use outcomes on the top right, we don't have to spend nearly as much time saying things like:

 "The thing we achieve is important because it helps people achieve this other thing that's important...and here's a bunch of research proving it."   

We can simply say "our participants increase their incomes by an average of $500 per month"  and people will understand that you're making a difference. 

As we move around the 2 x 2, we have to do more and more work explaining what we achieved and why it matters.  

In Quadrant 3, Subjective/Narrowly Understood, we have the most work ahead of us.

We have to explain our metric, we have to justify it as being useful, and we have to connect it to something else (e.g. "X is associated with lower justice system involvement") that people understand to be important.

Challenges with Narrowly Understood Outcomes

There are two big challenges with narrowly understood outcomes

First and obviously, many people simply aren't very familiar with it. You'll have to explain what the outcome is. "this outcome means X" or "this outcome measures Y". And X or Y have to be words that people understand without thinking about them.

"Socioemotional Intelligence is how well people understand, manage, and express their emotions." 

Second, you'll have to explain why the outcomes matter. If you don't do that, people will have to guess (at best) or will disengage (at worst).

"Socioemotional intelligence is critical because it helps students manage stress and persist through difficult tasks." 

Challenges with Subjective Outcomes

The biggest challenge with subjective outcomes is that you must justify that they are good measures in a way that is easy to understand.

• How do I know that your definition of a "living wage" is appropriate?

• Should I really care that "self-reported problem solving skills" improves after your program?

You have to somehow demonstrate that the subjective measure you use is closely connected with outcomes people care about or that it's pretty good at measuring the underlying concept.

Closely connected to outcomes people care about

"Self-reported problem solving skills have been shown to be highly associated with positive life outcomes such as X, Y, and Z."

or

Good at measuring the underlying concept

"Self-reported problem solving skills have been shown to be highly correlated with scores on problem-solving skills assessments."

However you do it, you need to convince your audience that the subjective measure is worth their attention.

So all of our outcomes should be Widely Understood and Objective?

No. The goal is NOT to get everything in the first quadrant. Your organization might not have any feasible outcomes that are widely understood and objective.

Our goals when searching for outcomes to track are:

1. To find outcomes that are feasible for us to track (e.g. does our staff have the time/skill to do it?)

2. Understand how we can succeed with outcomes for program measurement and fundraising

3. Understand the tradeoffs of picking one outcome instead of another. 

Don't be afraid to work outside of quadrant 1 (Widely Understood/Objective).

The best fitting, most feasible measures for your organization might be in the other 3 quadrants. That's ok. This 2 by 2 helps you recognize that you'll have to work a little bit harder to demonstrate that your measures are meaningful and your work is impactful. 

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Are you a small growing nonprofit? Check out countbubble.

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.

Ryan Brooks 

Founder, CountBubble, LLC

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