Kicking Ass and Taking Names: Boosting Accountability in 2010

I’m a professional evaluator.  What that basically means – once you wipe away all the program reports and statistics – is that I have a super-sensitive BS detector.  I can walk in the door of a program and know it’s either the real deal or fakeroo within about 10 minutes.  Same thing with outcome data — I can take one look at it and know if a program is totally trying to blue smoke me or is actually accomplishing something.

Just some suggestions – but here are 5 ways you can boost your accountability in 2010.  In other words, 5 ways to cut the BS and get serious and totally honest about your outcomes.

#1:  Measure the one or two things that are absolutely the most important to you.  What’s the bottom line for your program: no teen pregnancies, everyone finishing high school, no delinquency recividism?  Figure that out and measure it.

#2: Use numbers that don’t lie.  Either a teen finished high school or he didn’t.  Either a girl committed a 2nd juvenile offense or she didn’t.  These are powerful pieces of information.  Yes, it’s important that someone changed an attitude or learned a skill and yes, that should be measured but it shouldn’t be your only measurement!  Don’t be afraid to go for the true bottom line.

#3: Use decent measurement tools.  If you are measuring changes in knowledge, attitudes, or behavior, you might want to use a participant survey.  If you do, use one that’s been tested on your population, actually measures what you think is important, and can provide data that can be quickly analyzed.  Don’t – repeat DON’T – construct your own instrument unless you do so with the aid of a trained researcher/evaluator.

#4: Dump the “Baffle Them with BS” Strategy.  This little phrase was a basic tenet of my training in the old anti-poverty, community action world and we were really good at it.  Organizations that use the BTBS approach load up their year-end reports with endless lists of meaningless results; their outcome forests make it impossible to ever find a single tree.  And you know they’re hoping that the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ will convince the evaluator or funder that amazing (and well-documented) results are occurring. I see a long list of ‘results’ and I smell obfuscation.  If you’re accomplishing something that really matters – then just say so.  Dump the BTBS.

#5: Run a good program.  Honestly, if programs put half the time into running a good program as they do trying to hose the funding source, we’d all be better off.  Do what you say you’re going to do.  If you are unable to do it right or well, tell the funding source and change your strategy.  Don’t stretch, bend, pretzelize your numbers and results into having the appearance of a decent program — actually have a decent program.  It makes that accountability thing oh so much easier!

Accountability in nonprofit programming has become a very sophisticated game.  It’s easy to get caught up in new ways to prove impact.  My thinking is this:  run a good, solid program and measure its bottom line results and leave the fancy weaving to others.