This piece originally appeared as a free article in the Late October edition of The Measurement Advisor newsletter.
Paine Publishing’s Nonprofit Measurement Checklist lays out every step necessary for a successful nonprofit communications measurement program. Use it to plan ahead and then track your progress. It is copied in below, and you can also download it as a Word document by clicking here.
Paine Publishing’s Nonprofit Measurement Checklist |
A. Define your measures of success, KPIs and Dashboard |
| □ Make a list of who will want to see a report on your program or campaign
□ Set up a meeting of all the people who will want to see your report. The purpose of the meeting is to get consensus on the business goals and your measures of success □ Set the agenda for the meeting. By the end of the meeting you will need to have defined: o Who is the target audience? o What are the goals? Make sure they are both measureable, time-defined and tangible. o Define what/who the benchmark will be o Define the Kick Butt Index (KBI) that they will expect to see. □ Summarize the meeting in a document that includes your key metrics (Kick Butt Index) that you will be reporting on your Dashboard. □ Check back in with senior management to get sign off on the KBIs and the Dashboard. □ Based on the KBIs, make a list of the data you will need to report on those KPIs |
B. Select a research tool |
| □ Look at each metric and decide whether the most appropriate measurement tool is a survey, web analytics or content analysis.
□ if the goal is message related you will need either a survey or content analysis. Skip to section C. □ If the goal has to do with awareness or preference you’ll need a survey, Go on to section D □ if it has to do with web traffic, your tool will be Google Analytics or a similar tool, skip to section E |
C. Select a listening/monitoring tool |
| □ Make a list of the search terms i.e. companies, benchmarks, subjects, topics, issues or peer institutions you need to know about
□ Decide if your program is domestic, international or some combination of the two □ Make a list of the channels you need to monitor: o Traditional media § Network TV § Cable TV § Radio § Do you need actual tapes or will transcripts do? § Newspapers( Local, National?) § Magazines (Local, Trade, National?) § Trade publications (Online, print?) o Online Media § Online versions of traditional media § Online only publications o Social Media § External Blogs § YouTube § Flickr § Tumblr § Linked In § Social Bookmarking Sites (Digg, Delicious) § Forums □ Make a list of the quantitative data you will need: o Number of mentions o Number of comments, o Number of YouTube or Flickr views or comments or votes o number of Twitter followers o Opportunities to see (OTS) □ Make a list of the qualitative data you will need: o Tonality – positive, neutral, balanced or negative o Spokesperson quote o Affiliation of Spokesperson o Messages content –amplified, full, partial, incorrect negative or none o Individual messages communicated o Issues discussed o Subjects mentioned o Lines of business mentioned o Dominance of mention o Prominence of mention o Recommendations/reviews o Brand benefits mentioned o Accuracy of mention □ Estimate the volume of mentions using Google News or Technorati or prior monitoring programs. □ Decide if you need an automated system, with random sampling and/or human oversight or manual review □ Decide whether you will be doing this work in house or will need measurement partners □ Create an RFP that allows you to accurate compare vendors (apples to apples) – Include your best guess as to the volume of mentions and a full list of what you need to track. Ideally, you should provide all your prospective vendors with a maximum amount you are willing to spend and then ask them how many clips they can read for that amount. |
| □ Make a list of the search terms i.e. companies, benchmarks, subjects, topics, issues or peer institutions you need to know about
□ Decide if your program is domestic, international or some combination of the two □ Make a list of the channels you need to monitor: o Traditional media § Network TV § Cable TV § Radio § Do you need actual tapes or will transcripts do? § Newspapers § Magazines § Trade publications o Online Media § Online versions of traditional media § Online only publications o Social Media § External Blogs § YouTube § Flickr § Tumblr § Social Bookmarking Sites (Digg, Delicious) § Forums □ Make a list of the quantitative data you will need: o number of mentions o number of comments, o number of YouTube or Flickr views or comments or votes o number of Twitter followers o opportunities to see (OTS) a.k.a. impressions □ Make a list of the qualitative data you will need: o Tonality – positive, neutral, balanced or negative o Spokesperson quote o Affiliation of Spokesperson o Messages content –amplified, full, partial, incorrect negative or none o Individual messages communicated o Issues discussed o Subjects mentioned o Lines of business mentioned o Dominance of mention o Prominence of mention o Recommendations/reviews o Brand benefits mentioned o Accuracy of mention □ Estimate the volume of mentions using Google News or Technorati □ Decide if you need an automated system, random sampling or manual review □ Decide whether you will be doing this work in house or will need a measurement partners □ Create an RFP that allows you to accurate compare vendors (apples to apples) – Include your best guess as to the volume of mentions and a full list of what you need to track. Ideally, you should provide all your prospective vendors with a maximum amount you are willing to spend and then ask them how many clips they can read for that amount. □ Proceed to Section F |
D. Select a survey tool |
| □ Determine how quickly you need the results
□ Determine a budget for the research □ Read the IPR guide to good survey research in this paper http://www.instituteforpr.org/topics/measuring-organizational-trust/ □ Define your audience and source the list of desired respondents □ Get a clear, accurate reading on the Internet habits of your desired respondents. If they are primarily on-line an online survey might be acceptable. If they do not have reliable Internet or if they get most of their information off-line, a mail might be preferable. □ If you are going to use an outside research firm, give them a budget and see how many completed call they can make for that budget. Call their references, and study their existing reports if possible. □ If you are using a free survey tool, make sure you have that it has the capacity to ask the kind of questions you need answered. □ Contact a professional researcher – either from a local university or from a professional research house. We strongly recommend that the survey instrument be written by a professional or at least reviewed and tested by a professional researcher. □ Test the survey on a sample of your respondents □ Fix any problems and make sure you are getting the data you need □ Email or mail out the survey or begin the phone calls □ Check your results after 5 days to make sure that your survey is doing what you want it to do. □ Once the results are in, make sure you have the necessary cross tabs – for example, if you need to know what impact your media outreach is having on awareness, make sure you have a cross tab of awareness levels by media outlet used or remembered using. □ Write up the results and map them to your activities □ Proceed to Section F. |
E: Select a web analytic and/or CRM tool |
| □ Make a list of the specific campaigns or programs that you are going to measure
□ Define specific conversion criteria □ Create unique URLs (source codes) and mirror landing pages for each so you can connect the results to those specific campaigns or programs □ Make a list of the engagement data you will need: o Unique visitors o Repeat visitors o Length of time on site o Pages per visit o Downloads o Registrations o Conversions o Number or registrations o Number of leads o Number of qualified leads o Number of appointment made o Number of proposals delivered o Number of sales o Market share o Value of sales o Average profit per sale o Cost of social media program □ Talk to whoever within your organization manages the web site and collects web data determine what data is missing and how they will collect it. □ Decide if you need any additional tools □ If required, create an RFP for web data collection and analysis. |
F: Analyze & report results |
| □ Put all relevant data into an Excel spreadsheet
□ Based on your KBI and definitions of success, force rank all your programs from 1 to however many programs you are measuring. □ Assign a “resource investment” category for each. This should reflect the total amount of dollars and human resources that the program required. Typically we recommend the following categories: o Low o Medium o High o Very high □ Create a quadrant chart like this:
□ Study the programs in the bottom right quadrant – these are your most efficient. Then study the programs in the top left, these are your least effective. □ Look for significant failures, i.e. where did a program not deliver? □ Look for exceptional successes □ Drilldown into the data to determine cause and effect □ Pull most relevant charts and data into a PowerPoint presentation □ Report results and make recommendations ∞ |
