Nonprofits that work in deep, historic, and persistent poverty know that changing basic beliefs and behaviors takes patience and trust, which only come from strong relationships. Relationships that have been built over time with individuals and with families, and expanded across multiple dimensions of life, are the path to progress. The easiest success measures to communicate to donors are transactions—meals served, clients seen, children in attendance, clothes handed out—but are they the only things to be measured?
If relationships are the key to progress, then relationships also need to be measured, which makes this about management—not the donors. Program managers themselves need to determine whether relationships are being built and growing as a core method of change. And that determination is essential to ensure that resources flow to what works and away from what does not.
Hear from Edmundite Missions, an organization that has worked in the Black Belt of the Deep South for eighty-five years, as they describe the series of programs focused on creating change through relationships that they have put in place in the last six years. They capture performance metrics and have also developed measures and surrogate measures of relationships which are used to track program effectiveness and guide adjustments to program strategy.
Learning Objectives:
Understand how to develop a relationship dimension as a key element of program performance
Understand how to craft concrete measures of relationship development and track them over time
Appreciate the import of these measures for cultivating donors whose philanthropy is premised on measurable impact and community change