Nonprofits and evaluation: Empirical evidence from the field

Taking Your Eyes Off the Objective: The Relationship Between Income Sources and Satisfaction with Achieving Objectives in the UK Third Sector

“…Combined with the burden of greater monitoring (Low et al, 2007;Carman and Fredericks, 2008;Arvidson, 2009), this study finds that the this steadier and more secure source of funding actually displays no overall benefit for the TSO. However, the study finds no evidence that as far as the organisations are concerned, accessing this finance has had a negative overall effect on their ability to achieve their objectives as certain goods and resources are no longer provided (Haugh and Kitson, 2007).…”

“…Ideally objectives would be regarded in terms of the impact the organisation has on the well-being of the communities they serve (Wainwright, 2002). However, the difficulties in measuring impact may mean many consider output based measures (Carman and Fredericks, 2008). Some may even consider process based measures (Sowa et al, 2004).…”

“…There are rarely additional resources allocated by funding providers for the purposes of conducting these evaluations (Carman and Fredericks, 2008).…”

“…Understandably, the redirection of core funding to such activities is unpopular and seen as a resource drain and distraction (Wainwright, 2002;Carman and Fredericks, 2008). However, it is often hard to measure the true impact of a TSO's activities.…”

Policy Brief: The Case for Using Robust Measures to Evaluate Nonprofit Organizations

“…Previous studies have examined the influence of government (Carman and Fredericks 2008) and funders (Thomson 2010) in requiring and funding evaluation. However, in order to improve measures available to nonprofit organizations, funders and government must go beyond simply paying for or encouraging nonprofit measurement; rather, these agencies should encourage the development and testing of reliable and valid instruments.…”