Comments on: Weighing Outputs: Measuring Social Impact in Museums and Nonprofits

By: Decline of the MBA, Increase in Social Good? « Colleen Dilenschneider- Know Your Own Bone

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:24:26 +0000

[...] bottom line for the average American. The public and private sector are struggling with regard to measuring social impact, and they are feeling the pressure to measure social benefit in some quantitative way. If [...]

By: colleendilen

colleendilen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:01:51 +0000

@ Alessando- Thanks for the tweet!

@ Caroline- In class and with folks in my program, we talk a lot about how some nonprofits are moving toward “commoditization” and trying to measure outcomes like businesses (measuring things like “units of mental health,” for example). There’s this effort to measure the unmeasurable. That’s certainly a difficulty that the private sector does not have to face so directly with their clear-cut bottom-line.

@ Lauren- Thanks for reading! Lynn Dierking’s research sounds very thought-provoking. I’m very interested to learn what she finds. Maybe she’ll aid in uncovering an easier way to evaluate outcomes?

By: Lauren

Lauren — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:53:53 +0000

Hi there Colleen! (Yes, I have been silently reading your blog). This post reminded me of a talk I went to last week at UW. Lynn Dierking is currently doing some really interesting research focused on longitudinal outcomes for girls who participated as youth in one of several out-of-school science programs. They are interviewing young women who participated in programs up to 10 years prior. Long-term outcomes are difficult to evaluate, but not necessarily impossible!

By: Caroline

Caroline — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:17:32 +0000

It’s true. With arts nonprofits especially, it’s virtually impossible to measure the true impact, which is why I think the output number IS useful, because the wider net you cast, the more likely you are to create those “sparks.” But the quality definitely matters, and arts/cultural nonprofits have to be more clever in the ways they report the effect of their work. Instead of being so quantitative, we can collect drawings/essays/video feedback from students and teachers, keep in touch with former interns and get statements from them about how the org’s work affected their lives, etc etc.

This is something that’s really important to arts/culturals now as outside forces try to belittle the work that we do; now is the time to really get creative and FIGURE OUT ways to “quantity” our unquantifiable work and tell stories about why we’re important. It’s something I’m puzzling over now and trying to figure out how to do with my own organization.

By: Alessandro Califano

Alessandro Califano — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:12:21 +0000

Brilliant! I liked it very much – I’m retweeting this as “crdav”… Cheers!