I have just a smattering of topics today – a bit all over the map but I hope you find something of use here.

I am presenting tonight at the Fort Collins Ignite #7.  (Wahoo!) My presentation is about personal change -a topic near and dear to my heart.  The event is sold out so if you don’t already have tickets – sorry!  But the organizers have promised me a video I can use of the presentations so you can still catch my 5 minutes/20 slides  on  making personal change.  I will post here as soon as it becomes available.

Idealware does great research and I use their work all the time – they are now taking a survey of nonprofits using Facebook and will turn that data into useful information no doubt.  If you are a nonprofit – consider answering the survey to help Idealware with their work.  Their research is only as good as the data they collect – so put your two cents in, its worth it!  If you are not a nonprofit, consider donating to Idealware to help them continue providing great research and information to the nonprofit community.

And I have been pondering a recent article I found on Stanford Social Innovation Review: Measuring Social Value- its by Geoff Mulgan and he discusses the difficulties of measuring the work of the public sector using traditional business oriented metrics and tools.  While determining value in an economic sense can be observed by what someone will pay for a product or service – it is hard apply that same evaluation to social products and services that may not be purchased by the end user or whose long term benefit may be derived tangentially.  For example; drug users don’t typically pay for treatment and yet the benefits accrue directly to them.  Society as a whole may pay for this service as it creates other benefits – reduced crime, reduced homelessness, more productive (and presumably tax paying) citizens, etc. – that accrue to the larger society.

Mulgan’s organization – the United Kingdom’s National Health Service – has begun using judgement statements as part of its funding reviews to determine the social value of different initiatives they might invest in.  The judgments fell into four categories “1) strategic fit (how well the proposed innovation meets the needs of the health service), 2) potential health outcomes (including likely impact on quality-adjusted life years and patient satisfaction), 3) cost savings and economic effects, and 4) risks associated with implementation. ”

I initially was thinking of this in conjunction with LSC’s recent announcement opening their next round of Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) funding – how might LSC take these judgments into consideration when making innovation investments?  A useful discussion for them might take the shape of: what do we value overall about what technology makes possible for our programs?  Is there a particular technology that we think has greater potential to create benefit for our low income clients than any other?  I realize that these value judgments are evidenced by what TIG funds and doesn’t fund already – however a more deliberate articulation of these judgments might result in a greater awareness of the choices and trade offs that inevitably must be made as well as a greater sense of accomplishment around particular ideas or innovations that do get funded.  I have heard rumor that LSC might be convening another technology summit like the one they hosted in the late 1990s – thinking about and articulating these value judgments would be great topic for the attendees to grapple with.

I will have to think more – and re-read the article a few more times – to figure out how I think these value judgments might be used as measures by a nonprofit but it is an interesting take on how counting drug addicts “cured” is not the only way to measure the value of our social ventures.  Are there long term benefits to society at large and how would we account for those?  Who would we ask to make the value judgment once we had them identified?  Evaluation is always a thorny issue but one worth tackling as it informs our choices and good choices lead to good investments.

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Blog by Joyce