The Right Metrics to Measure Impact
By Lanna Chan ’13
As we progress in a world with an increasing number of nonprofits starting each day, the audience — whether nonprofits, donors, or for-profit organizations — can’t help but wonder about the effects of nonprofits and how they can be measured. Coupled with the increase of social capital markets, it is important for nonprofits to move towards scale and impact — but is the solution as simple as it sounds, given the evolution of metrics measurement and availability of social capital?
In the past, metrics have been difficult to monitor and measure given the capacity of the nonprofit or the inability to measure effectiveness. While there is still significant progress to be made with metrics and measurement, organizations such as Citizen Schools have made developments with using metrics and monitoring them to make decisions and changes. In addition, the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) has focused on increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing, pairing the growth of social capital markets with metrics monitoring with the need to best leverage resources for scale and impact. Lastly, foundations such as The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation have used metrics to focus and monitor their grants in areas where scale and impact are possible.
What is the journey these nonprofits have made given the advancement of metrics and social capital markets, and how are they scaling the impact they are making with their investments? What challenges have they faced, and what benefits have been and do they expect to realize? Join us in October for a session focused on “The New Nonprofit” facilitated by Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, with speakers from Citizen Schools, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and leading consulting firms.
“When you try to run on just free enterprise, you’re really trying to sit on a one-legged stool,” he said. I’d like to see large, layered-capital infrastructure projects in the social capital markets discussion.
Thanks so much for your insights, Christopher. I think you’re creroct that many of the ethical lapses we see related to social media could be rectified by simultaneous reinforcement of ethics (something that I think all social work agencies could use) and greater understanding of social media and its nature. Certainly social workers, and other professionals, are expected to have internalized highly developed ethical codes, given the impossibility of any external Code covering all possible contingencies. The greatest areas of gray that I see, where organizations and practitioners are likely to need some additional guidance, relate to those concepts of dual relationship’, and the whole idea of how much authority agencies should have over their employees’ private lives. So, for example, where the NASW Code prohibits dual relationships that could be harmful, there’s likely a need for some discussion of how refusing to enter into a dual relationship could, in the context of social media, be potentially harmful, too. Where there’s no absolute prohibition, practitioners need some guidance and clients deserve some consistency and protection. And the other area that really vexes me is this idea of when better safe than sorry becomes an indefensible intrusion into social workers’ lives. It’s probably best, really, for social work practitioners to avoid the use of social media when their entry into that field could always be problematic (in terms of clients wanting to connect through that media, and then a difficult overlapping of roles), but social workers also deserve the networking and social outlet that social media can provide. It parallels, in some ways, the challenges agencies have faced in light of restrictions on political activity, but, there, most agencies have decided that what social workers do in their off time should be basically off-limits to agency control. The beauty of social media, of course, is that it transcends those boundaries, but that’s also precisely what makes it more difficult for our profession to navigate. I appreciate your comments and would love to hear more what you think about our profession’s ethical practice and I’m following you on Twitter now, so I’ll look forward to staying connected! melinda
Though each of your points dseerves significant discussion, I suspect that your last bullet actually covers a fair amount of what you have questioned earlier in your post. Social media and social networks, by their very nature, cannot provide predictable controls over who will ultimately have access to what is posted regardless of one’s privacy settings. As a consequence, any post needs to be written with the understanding that anyone could eventually see it. That being the case, I would suggest an extremely conservative use of these media by providers. If you wouldn’t stand in your waiting room, or in your parking lot and loudly proclaim it, I wouldn’t post it either. Agencies perhaps have more leeway in posting to social media and social networking sites than do providers but, there again, client and staff disclosures need to be treated as if they were public documents. Though it perhaps sounds obvious to say that, the reality is that many professionals forget this. The three reasons I see most frequently for this are that:1.) These sites make it so easy to post impulsively and many folks do. Send’ is hit before the implications of the post are really thoroughly considered.2.) Agency policies and training on social media use are still rare and, unfortunately, are frequently horribly inadequate when they do occur.3.) Many people feel that social media and social networking sites somehow magically exist in a place detached from the rest of the internet and genuinely don’t imagine that what they post will be both visible and searchable online for a loooong time.As for guidance from the ethics codes The absence of specific mention of social media and social networking may not be as much of a hinderance as it seems. After all, the NASW, APAs, and ACA codes all stress the need for informed consent, the need to protect client confidentiality, and the importance of placing a client’s emotional needs before those of the provider. Attention to these mandates, in themselves, should provide a considerable amount of guidance even if social networks and social media sites aren’t mentioned by name.Thoughts?