BLOG

By Catherine Smith, Director of Learning and Innovation, Sangfroid Strategy Program evaluation is not something that just happens at the end of a program. Quality program evaluation is integrated into the program from the start, and can be used to both understand how to improve your program, and to see how well you are addressing the problems you are trying to solve. Today we’ll share 5 simple ways to enhance your ability to measure your program’s impact and improve in real-t

Oftentimes, nonprofit professionals like Executive Directors, Program Managers, and other program staff are hired into an organization to manage an existing program. Time is always a constraint – so you just jump in and start doing. While simply keeping things moving may feel like progress, the harsh reality is that the hurried movements and decisions void of pausing for any real strategy are likely doing your organization more harm than good – and most likely cost money, too

The rise of outcome oriented grantmaking in the U.S., paired with the common ‘ proposal → grant → report’ pathway, left us with the unintentional consequence of reinforcing the faulty belief that running a program and measuring the outcomes of a program are two different things. This separation occurs naturally when you think about the idea that you collect different data to report to different funders during different times in the cycle of your program. The more funders you

As an industry, nonprofits aren’t used to understanding, measuring, and communicating the value of their program -and this last part is key – in service of their staff and clients first. In part, this is because historically we’ve tied data collection to accountability. When nonprofits set up infrastructure for data collection, 99% of the time it is for the purpose of giving it away in the form of grant reports, annual reports, or board updates. This isn’t just unique to nonp

Every time a report is due, you rifle through a stack of program files and click around an endless sea of folders as you try and answer the most basic questions about how many people you served and what impact your programs had. You sigh as you fill in the missing numbers with your best guesstimate and fill out the rest of the section with lengthy descriptions of what your program does hoping it’s good enough to stand out. You hit send, let the team know the grant applicatio

The first question I ask every nonprofit I work with is – What makes your organization stand out from the rest? I’ve heard hundreds of nonprofit leaders, program managers, and development directors struggle to answer this question. This is the single most important question any nonprofit can answer for themselves, the people they serve, and the donors and funders who support their work. The only way to truly answer this question is to build the infrastructure to understand, m