Today's Featured Blog Posts
How to stop the an out-of-control fundraising approval process
"After three or so, each additional reviewer can only make your work worse. The ignorance, stupidity, and personal need for significance compounds with each reviewer. By the time you're at 10 reviewers, all the life is gone from your message. At 20, coherence has been removed. By the time 30 reviewers have weighed in, you'd have been better off sending a page of solid black ink. I don't know from experience, but I have a feeling that reviewer #35's comments turn the fundraising message into a soul-eating neuro-virus that automatically consigns anyone who accidentally tries to read it to the Fires of Hell." Read the full post.
Using Imperfect Metrics Well: Tracking Progress and Driving Change
"Not being able to afford the time and money to develop excellent metrics, nonprofits often have to glean whatever value they can from using imperfect metrics. To be more precise about the term imperfect, we mean metrics that are anecdotal, subjective, interpretive, or qualitative. Or perhaps the metric relies on a small sample, uncontrolled situational factors, or cannot be precisely replicated. For most nonprofits, it is nevertheless a great leap forward from doing nothing to using even seriously flawed by reasonably relevant measures for their critical goals. Aside from technical requirements, the most critical requirement is that both the board evaluator and the operating manager agree that the process is reasonable and that the outcomes from it constitute fair and trustworthy information. With that goal in mind, we can explore how to use an imperfect metric well." Read the full post.
