Most nonprofits, including some of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s grantees, do not yet have convincing quantitative evidence of their programs’ effectiveness and lack the organizational capacity to muster it. That is why we invest heavily in helping grantees build their organizational capacity, including the internal processes, information technology and skilled personnel they need to measure, analyze and continually improve their performance.

The most basic measures of grantee performance and growth are the numbers of youth it serves and its annual revenues. We supplement these with program management information that helps grantees manage performance and helps EMCF monitor it. Such information includes:

• Demographic data about the population a program serves;
• Measures of engagement such as program intensity and duration (hours and days attended, for example);
• Program completion or graduation rates; and
• Subsequent placement in a job, enrollment in college or other post-secondary program.

The Foundation also works with grantees to develop measures of organizational health and management, including milestones tied to an organization's business plan for growth. Examples include:

• Financial systems,
• Staffing and talent development,
• Capital to support expansion,
• Adequacy of local public and private funding opportunities,
• The management team's performance, and
• The board's leadership and engagement.

We have found that developing and implementing these measures, though difficult and time- consuming, is essential to accomplishing our mission and our grantees’ missions. Setting clear performance objectives and establishing credible reporting systems to assess progress provide us and our grantees with an impetus to continually improve our performance.