The Barcelona Principles and the standards that have grown from them make measurement and evaluation faster, less expensive, and more convenient. Of course they do give us industry pundits something to rant about, but the point of their existence is to help companies and organizations more readily evaluate and improve their PR and communications. Your non-profit can benefit greatly by following the standards. Here are a few of the very big and significant improvements you can expect:

1. You will save time

Imagine a world where you never have to explain a metric or a graph. That isn’t the world PR people live in today—especially PR people in the nonprofit sector. But if we’d all follow the Barcelona Principles and the measurement standards we’d be a lot closer. Standards matter because they establish norms, a common language, and they’re designed to simplify our lives. While they don’t prescribe exactly how measurement should be done, the Transparency Table does help put everyone on the same page in terms of how measurement is defined and used.

2. You will save money

One of the advantages of having common definitions and measuring against clearly defined goals is there is less wasted research and less duplicated effort. When everyone agrees upfront on the goals and objectives you know exactly what success looks like and what metrics you need to measure it. No more having to justify a number or explain a chart. The standards help you set expectations upfront about what you are going to measure, which can save everyone money and time.

3. You will have greater credibility

Gone are the days when you could look credible by talking about how many “likes” or hits you got. Today, bosses and boards want results that are much more tangible. The standards emphasize starting with business outcomes—which in the nonprofit world means “how are you helping achieve your mission?” When you start with agreed-upon organizational objectives, and then define how your communications efforts contribute to those efforts, your measures become real, meaningful, and tangible.

4. You will be seen as contributing to the mission, not just as “the PR person”

Too often PR, social media, and marketing folks only deliver activity metrics, for instance, the number of tweets, posts, or articles. No wonder they are so often considered incidental to the real work of the organization. The Barcelona Principles requires measurement against organizational goals, so you are forced to think about and work toward the real, social impact you are having. If you establish metrics that measure your contribution to organizational goals, then it will be obvious that you and your work are making a difference to the mission.

5. Morale will go up

Most people in the non-profit sector aren’t there for the big bucks. They do the work because they care strongly about the mission, the cause, or the problem the organization is trying to solve. When you can tie your results to real change in the world, everyone can see the impact they have, and they feel better about the job they are performing. ∞