Yesterday I had the pleasure of lunching with my esteemed colleague and good buddy Scott Smith, who is professional services director with Community TechKnowledge.

Scott and I first met in a previous life, which is to say that he was with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and I was with Family Service of Greater Boston (a UWMB affiliated agency).  Something we've shared - in addition to an interest in the human side of computing and a geeky sense of humor - is a strong sense of the importance of outcomes measurement.  Our conversation covered quite a range of topics, but at one point I found myself appreciating the opportunity to compare notes with a colleague who implicitly assumes that outcomes measurement should be built into a nonprofit organization's planning and operations.

Many organizations are becoming more aware of the need for programmatic outcomes measurement, and much of the credit is due to philanthropists and funders such as the United Way, for encouraging their grantees to start measuring (for example) just how many person-hours it takes to ensure the safely of a child who is at risk of neglect or abuse without separating him/her from the family of origin.  This is extremely important - we should know the social (and financial) cost of the programs and policies that nonprofit organizations put into operation.

At the same time, we as stakeholders should also be looking at the technology infrastructure of nonprofit organizations - and of the nonprofit sector as a whole - and asking in what ways and to what degree that technology is supporting and increasing the programmatic outcomes. 
  
As I have mentioned before, it's difficult to keep technology decisions tied to desired organizational outcomes, and nonprofit organizations often have very strong reasons for being more concerned with processes than outcomes.  However, I have a sort of Platonic ideal of outcomes measurement combined with strategic technology for nonprofits:
1) Needs assessment
2) Strategic planning
3) Implementation  
4) Customizing, tweaking, fiddling, adjusting
5) Outcomes measurement  

And then of course, you start over with needs assessment and keep repeating the cycle until you retire.  The fun never ends.

However, as Scott and I agreed yesterday, the time to start building in outcomes measurement for your organization's technology is during Steps 1 and 2.  That's when to begin asking what you are trying to achieve, and what (in quantitative terms, if possible) success would look like.

When nonprofit organizations ask me for strategic technology advice, I occasionally find myself saying, jokingly, during the first conversation, "you have to tell me what results would make you happy, and then you have to promise me that if I find a way to get you there you'll actually be happy!"  The latter part of that pact is very difficult in a world of moving targets and shifting processes, but is worth keeping in mind at the beginning, middle, and end of a strategic planning cycle.

And although it's not the magic solution, it's reassuring when application service providers that serve the nonprofit sector, such as CommunityTech Knowledge, build in the idea of outcomes measurement from the beginning.

An afterthought:  a lot of my ideas here are influenced by Charlotte Kahn of the Boston Foundation,  who has wisely asked questions such as "we value what we can measure, but are we measuring the things we value?"  (I'm not certain that I have her words verbatim here, but am very much indebted to her for this line of inquiry.)