Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity

For the entire sixteen years I've been working full-time in the social sector, a problem has been gnawing at me, sometimes literally keeping me up at night.Here's the problem in a nutshell: We don't manage to outcomes, thus greatly diminishing our collective impact.Despite all the right intentions, the vast majority of nonprofits do not have the benefit of good information and tools to determine where they're headed, chart a logical course, and course-correct when they're off.They're navigating with little more than intuition and anecdotes.Only a fortunate few have a reliable way to know whether they're doing meaningful, measurable good for those they serve.I know "manage to outcomes" may sound to some like fuzzy jargon-and frankly, I wish I had a better term.But I assure you, this problem is more than just a sleep-stealing concern of pointy-headed funders like me.It's a huge problemand a huge potential opportunity-for the nonprofits themselves, for the families they aspire to benefit, and for society as a whole.The problem is not new.But it is growing in urgency.The cold reality is that in our present era of unsustainable debts and deficits, our nation simply will not be able to justify huge subsidies for social-sector activities and entities without more assurance that they're on track to realize results.Public funders-and eventually private funders as well-will migrate away from organizations with stirring stories alone, toward well-managed organizations that can also demonstrate meaningful, lasting impact.Not every insight in this call to arms will apply to every organization.No one would expect, for example, that small organizations with budgets under $2 million a year would invest hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in building fancy performance-management systems to monitor results in real time.But even the smallest organizations can find ideas here and in the book from which this essay is drawn to help them manage in a way that allows them to know