5 Nonprofit Trends to Watch in 2013

I’m more of an optimist than fortune-teller, but the nonprofit sector is changing in some exciting ways. And I, for one, am excited to see what the new year brings. Following are five trends we should watch for.

1. More demand for outcomes
The biggest trend I see is a growing demand for nonprofits to articulate what results they hope their work will achieve and track whether those results are actually happening. Nonprofits have long discussed the outputs of their work: number of people served, number of services provided, etc. But the sector is increasingly being asked to articulate and track the outcomes that are achieved. How are people’s lives changing because of the work a nonprofit does? Social change has become an increasing demand of funders and other supporters. That means nonprofits must develop their own theories of change (how they use community resources to create change to a social problem) and then measure whether that theory is becoming a reality.