Bridging the Data Disconnect Between Nonprofits and Their Funders


By Beth Kanter
Next week, I’m headed to Seattle for a couple of “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” book events generously sponsored by Microsoft.    I’m very excited to participate in one of the evening events, a curated discussion on Data, Transparency, and Impact with Jane Meseck (Microsoft), Paul Shoemaker (Social Venture Partners) and Eric Stowe (Splash) and moderated by: Erica Mills, Claxon Marketing. (The event is sold out, but they are live-streaming it)   They are crowdsourcing questions for the conversation here.

Paul Shoemaker shared this post from CEP, “Data Point:  Foundations’ Information Needs VS Nonprofits’ Needs” that shares one of the key findings from a recent study called “Room for Improvement” that looks at foundation’s support of performance assessment.    There is a lot of pressure for nonprofits to “demonstrate impact” and performance assessment is one method.   The study aimed to get the nonprofit perspective on these two important questions:    How important do nonprofits believe performance assessment is to demonstrating impact? And if understanding nonprofit performance matters so much to foundations, just how much help are they offering to nonprofits to assess performance?   The survey fundings are based on a sample nonprofit CEOs  whose organizations are  receiving funding from foundations giving at least $5 million annually in grants called the “Nonprofit Voice,”  with 170 respondents answering the questions on this survey.

The report offers a couple of key findings:
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