Is there logic in your NPOs program model?

Back in 2000, the organization I was working for became one of the first United Way of Metro Atlanta-funded agencies required to complete a logic model as part of its new application process.

The UW held a number of training sessions to familiarize its members with the concept and I remember thinking what a no-brainer it was that funders should want to see how organizations quantified their impact and why it was just then being instituted.

The model (aka theory of change) depicted the metrics of an organization’s program execution and was designed to show how it planned to accomplish a particular objective for the funding it was requesting.

For the uninitiated, the components include inputs (resources including people and materials), activities to be performed with the inputs, outputs (quantifiable production from the activities), and outcomes (measurable change in targeted population or to the targeted issue, which may be displayed for the short term, intermediate and long term).

From this a conclusion on impact should be able to be deduced. Check out this brief video training I developed on creating a logic model for your organization.

As the staffer responsible for completing the application, I consulted with my development director and program staff and the process wasn’t too difficult to complete. I was given metrics for the programs they wanted included in the funding request and I filled in the blanks. I didn’t once question whether they were accurate or if we’d even ever reached those benchmarks. Just assumed they were and we had.

In the positions that followed, I found that some private foundations had begun to request logic models (or some explanation as to how we determined effectiveness) in their application requirements and some funders even asked to see the tools we used to measure the outcomes we’d claimed. We complied and what we submitted was never questioned, at least not to my knowledge.

I can only remember being on a handful of site visits by funders, and most of the time it was the UW. The organizations I’d worked for had received some pretty hefty awards, in the tens of thousands, so one would figure they’d be expected to come see how their investments were being used.

But I remember awards into the hundreds of thousands by a pretty well-heeled national nonprofit that may or may not have asked for a logic model, but hadn’t come to see about their investment, at least not since the inception of the award (this organization was into its third year of receipt and I’d written a final report where qualified metrics on outcomes in particular were not required).

This recollection of my early encounters with logic models was prompted by an opinion piece that appeared in a recent edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Entitled “About High Fundraising Costs: It’s Complicated”, it gives commentary on the recent spotlight put on direct marketing companies hired by nonprofits (or in some cases started by the companies themselves) and the obscenely high fees they charge for their services, which in one case amounted to 90% of one NPO’s fundraising costs. Exposed in “America’s Worst Charities”, these direct marketing companies had more than a few recognizable NPO clients.

Were it not bad enough that these organizations were “called out” so to speak for their egregious errors in judgment, and that their donors were duped, collateral damage could well be felled upon those legitimate organizations that use direct marketing responsibly.

The article makes great points about the importance of telling powerful stories and how both journalists and NPO executives alike need to learn about the economics of direct marketing in order to ask and answer questions about it in an informed manner.

But the last paragraph was what got me to thinking about how NPOs can use the power of the logic model to boldly speak to the impact of their existence on lives they touch and change and thus legitimize the money expended to realize such change.

It reads, “Perhaps all the bad press will help us get serious about telling donors about results. If it becomes standard practice for all nonprofits to show proof of their effectiveness, we will finally see the collapse of the faux nonprofits set up just to make money using direct marketing.

And then maybe all of us who are in this business because we want to make a difference can win back the donors who lost faith because they gave into scams.”

Outcome-based programming facilitates donor-centered fundraising, a fact that will become increasing apparent as organizations attract more organizationally-involved donors. We’ve got to put the time in to developing legitimate models that tell us what we’re doing and with whom, how we’re doing and if we’re making a difference.

This is a teaching moment for us.

Let’s model the logic we say in our missions that communities need us to be. Does your organization use logic models in its evaluation, planning and fund development activities?