Guest Post By Sarah Hunter, a Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

One of my interests is building evaluation capacity within nonprofit community service organizations to increase impact. The model RAND uses for this work is called Getting To Outcomes (GTO), a free program management tool with demonstrated success in improving program performance.

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Guest Post by Bernadette Sangalang, Ph.D.

Many nonprofit organizations recognize the value of evaluation and using data for decision-making, but they often struggle with insufficient time, resources, and expertise to develop and implement an organizational practice of evaluation. Having worn different hats in my work with nonprofit organizations – as evaluation consultant, funder, and nonprofit evaluation director – I have encountered positive and negative reactions to evaluation. In my experience, when nonprofits hear the word evaluation, they may run away, their eyes may glaze over, or they may claim they don’t need it. To some, evaluation is a scary word. To others, it’s a foreign language. But in reality it’s neither.

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Data that Empowers the Community

Guest post by Tom Pollak, Director of National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute

I expect the role of the nonprofit sector to increase in coming decades if we are to successfully "bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress," as Martin Luther King put it. In an increasingly global world, where technology will leave more of us under- or unemployed, and where climate change, an aging population, fiscal challenges, and other forces will leave us increasingly vulnerable, we need a trustworthy and effective nonprofit sector that can help build the resilient, caring, and thriving communities in which all citizens can flourish.

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Better Data, First Turn Outward Toward the Community

Guest post by Brian Gallagher, President and CEO of United Way Worldwide

I recently participated in the World Economic Forum. Conversations there increasingly center on the economic benefits of human success.

More and more companies understand that investing in the long-term health of a community is essential to driving bottom-line results. They see that their environment has changed and that the strategies they were using no longer match their goals.

This provides a good lesson for nonprofits as well. What if what we’re doing is also wrong? What if we’re not focused on the right issues? Importantly, does what we’re doing and how we’re doing it give us confidence that we can reach the larger, more sustainable goals we have for our communities?

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Guest Post by Leslie Payne, Senior Director of Innovation and Creative Services at Arabella Advisors.

I’m a fan of data visualization. I’m not an expert, a developer, or even as frequent a user of visualizations as I’d like to be.

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