Tip #1: The mission is your mission
Everyone in nonprofit communications should be able to enunciate their organization’s mission in one minute or less. But for good measurement to happen, you need to be equally articulate about the role communications plays in achieving that mission.
Put another way, if you are a nonprofit dedicated to finding a cure for cancer, you’re not going to find that cure with a press release or a perfectly crafted tweet. So you have to figure out what your boss’s boss and the board think your role is in achieving the mission. One way to start is by asking leadership: “If you or your department went away, would it have an impact on the mission? If so, how?”
Another way to understand your role is to start by writing down the problem you were hired to solve, or whatever your personal objectives are. Then ask “So what?” until you discover the connection with your organization’s goals. For example, if you were hired to increase engagement in your organization, so what? How does that get you closer to finding the cure for cancer? Does it raise money? Identify new donors? Identify people who might sign up for a trial? Get people out to your events? Keep asking “So what?” until you can connect the dots between what you do every day and your organization’s mission.
Tip #2: Understand which stakeholders are most important
Yes, I know, there are many of them, from volunteers to donors to sponsors to your fellow employees. Play the following game to decide which are most important. Gather everyone who will be involved in using, reading, presenting, or basing decisions on the data that you plan to report. List all the potential audiences. Give everyone $1 million (use some old Monopoly money or sticky notes) to spend communicating to those audiences and see where they’d spend the money. Focus on the three that receive the most monetary votes. That’s where to concentrate your measurement.
Tip #3: Define at least 3 specific metrics
Each metric and goal must have three components:
- Some number that you measure or calculate, like an amount of money, a percentage, or a ratio.
- Some other number of the same type to compare it to, such as last week, last month, or your competition.
- A date by when the goal will be achieved.
So, for example, if your audience is volunteers and you want to increase the trained and available supply of volunteers, then you might have as your metric: “By 2016, achieve a 5% increase in the number of trained and available volunteers, at the same or lower cost per volunteer as the previous year.”
Tip #4: Get buy in from the top
It’s not enough to just decide to do measurement, you need to make sure that people at the highest level are in agreement with your measurement priorities and programs. Make sure your senior leadership team, and ideally the board, agrees with your specific measurement plans and metrics. Their support will make things easier immediately and down the line.
Tip #5: Assess your tool and data situation
Our experience with nonprofits is that they always have more measurement tools and data available than they think. Conduct a probing survey of all departments, especially development and marketing, to understand what data systems they have in place. You’ll be surprised. Much of the data you need is probably already being collected.
Tip #6: Analyze results to answer the “So what?” questions
We’ve seen more measurement systems fail for want of context than any other single reason. Conclusions like “This bar is bigger than that bar,” and “There was a big spike in June,” are meaningless. Sooner rather than later people realize that this sort of measurement is ineffective. Always provide context that will allow the “So what?” questions to be answered. For instance, “Our increased social media activity in May was followed by a big spike in donations in June.”
What makes measurement valuable is to learn why that bar is bigger, and what you can do next time to make it even bigger? What caused that spike, and how can we do that on a regular basis? How will you use the data to do better planning? That’s what makes a measurement system useful, and successful. ∞
Thanks to Amanda’s Cookin’ for the image.
