The growth of philanthropic foundations in numbers and significance raises two immediate questions. First, what makes for success and failure of foundations’ projects and activities? Second, what yardsticks or benchmarks are used to measure performance and track goal attainment? The purpose of this book is to delve deeper into the complex set of issues that lie behind the performance and wider impact of philanthropy. Performance Measurement in Philanthropic Foundations looks at the strengths and weaknesses of philanthropic foundations, which are independent of both the market and ballot box and yet open to signal and incentive deficiencies. The authors use in-depth case studies from different countries to illustrate the problems and challenge much of the conventional wisdom on foundation "success" and "failure." The book also outlines the main contours of a proactive governance and management style to address those problems.

The social sector is undergoing a major transformation. We are witnessing an explosion in efforts to deliver social change, a burgeoning impact investing industry, and an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth. Yet we live in a world of rapidly rising inequality, where social sector services are unable to keep up with societal need, and governments are stretched beyond their means. Alnoor Ebrahim addresses one of the fundamental dilemmas facing leaders as they navigate this uncertain terrain: performance measurement. How can they track performance towards worthy goals such as reducing poverty, improving public health, or advancing human rights? What results can they reasonably measure and legitimately take credit for? This book tackles three core challenges of performance faced by social enterprises and nonprofit organizations alike: what to measure, what kinds of performance systems to build, and how to align multiple demands for accountability. It lays out four different types of strategies for managers to consider—niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem—and details the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each. Finally, this book examines the roles of funders such as impact investors, philanthropic foundations, and international aid agencies, laying out how they can best enable meaningful performance measurement.

Winner of the 2009 Skystone Ryan Prize for Research, Association of Fundraising Professionals Research Council “All outstanding philanthropic successes have one thing in common: They started with a smart strategic plan,” say authors Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Hal Harvey, president of ClimateWorks. Money Well Spent explains how to create and implement a strategy that ensures meaningful results. Components of a smart strategy include: Achieving great clarity about one’s philanthropic goals Specifying indicators of success before beginning a project Designing and implementing a plan commensurate with available resources Evidence-based understanding of the world in which the plan will operate Paying careful attention to milestones to determine if you are on the path to success or if midcourse corrections are necessary Drawing on examples from over 100 foundations and non-profits, Money Well Spent gives readers the framework they need to design a smart strategy, addressing such key issues as: Effective use of tools—education, science, direct services, advocacy—that can achieve your objectives. How to choose the forms of funding to achieve stated goals How to measure the impact of grants or programs When to be patient and stick with a winning strategy and when to abandon a strategy that isn’t working This is a book for everyone who wants to get the most from a philanthropic dollar: donors, foundations, and non-profits.

Identifying, measuring and improving social impact is a significant challenge for corporate and private foundations, charities, NGOs and corporations. How best to balance possible social and environmental benefits (and costs) against one another? How does one bring clarity to multiple possibilities and opportunities? Based on years of work and new field studies from around the globe, the authors have written a book for managers that is grounded in the best academic and managerial research.It is a practical guide that describes the steps needed for identifying, measuring and improving social impact. This approach is useful in maximizing the impact of different types of investments, including grants and donations, impact investments, and commercial investments.With numerous examples of actual organizational approaches, research into more than fifty organizations, and extensive practical guidance and best practices, Measuring and Improving Social Impacts fills a critical gap.

A decade ago, Thomas J. Tierney left Bain & Company to cofound The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit focused on helping donors and nonprofit leaders to develop and execute strategies to accelerate social change. In Give Smart, Tierney pools his hands-on knowledge with Duke professor Joel L. Fleishman's expertise to create a much-needed primer for philanthropists and the nonprofit organizations they support. Drawing from personal experiences, research spanning twentieth- and twenty-first-century philanthropy, contemporary interviews, and Bridgespan's extensive field work, Give Smart presents the definitive guide to engaged philanthropy.

Performance Measurement in Non-Profit Organizations: The Road to Integrated Reporting addresses the issue of performance measurement in nonprofit companies with the aim of defining a system of useful measures to understand, manage, and improve the performance of such companies by employing systems theory to examine their conditions of existence and manifestations of life. From the proposed company model follows that the system of performance measures should make it possible to keep under control both the productive transformation, with the physical-technical efficiency indicators, and the economic transformation, with the economic efficiency indicators, and the financial transformation with the financial efficiency indicators, and finally the managerial transformation with the effectiveness indicators, taking into account the degree of satisfaction of the expectations of the main categories of company stakeholders. Readers will understand that economic analysis alone is not sufficient to assess the performance of such organizations, but it is necessary to unite it with the analysis of sustainability dimensions. It would therefore be appropriate to draw up an integrated report that combines the economic and financial dimensions with the pillars of sustainability, as in the case of companies in the second sector. There is a gap in the literature in this area that this book aims to fill, making it a valuable resource to researchers, academics, and advanced students interested in performance evaluation of NPOs.