Online Resource Aims to Improve Nonprofit Performance

So we're going to pull together a variety of industry experts to contribute to make this Outcomes and Effective Practices Portal the single resource for nonprofits in order for them to evolve and become high-performing organizations.

FS: What type of information will be on the portal?
JM: Let's say you're running an after-school program. You would go into this portal and you could either navigate by program type or outcome type or tool type, but in this case let's say you navigate by program to "after-school program." What you're going to find there is an explanation of what an after-school program should achieve, what is the appropriate target population for an after-school program. So for instance, it doesn't make sense to start an after-school program that's going to help kids to graduate from high school and set that up in a neighborhood where 99 percent of the kids graduate from high school anyway. So, what is the appropriate target population, what are the assessment tools, what are the questions that you can ask the potential client to make sure that they fit within the appropriate target population, what are the specific outcomes that you should strive to achieve? You've got the immediate outcomes and the long-term outcomes. And how do you measure your progress toward achieving those outcomes?