I’ve been in Israel at the invitation of the Rothschild Foundation (called Yad Handiv here) and Fay Twersky of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who led our Visiting Committee on Evaluation and Performance Measurement, which also included Paul Brest from the Hewlett Foundation, and Martin Brookes of New Philanthropy Capital. Fay’s team at the Gates Foundation just released an excellent summary of their approach to ‘actionable measurement’. We have discussed measurement and evaluation with foundation, business and government leaders. We have also met an extraordinary group of productive and innovative nonprofits who were all eager to do more to learn, and improve their efforts by measuring the results of their work, including:
- Tech-Careers — founded by an Ethiopian Israeli to prepare young Ethiopian Israelis (whose poverty rate hovers around 50%) for technology careers by providing them with intensive training program delivered through a residential program based on a Kibbutz near Tel Aviv;
- Muntada, the Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education and Health addresses counseling and education related to reproductive health and sexuality, matching their methods to the local culture and needs; and
- Elem, which provides outreach, drop in centers, support services to runaway, neglected, and homeless Israeli and Arab youth throughout the country.
Many of the challenges these groups face around measurement of results resonate with those of US-based nonprofits – defining the right questions, understanding how their efforts tie to the desired results, figuring out how to find the time, technology, and funding to gather the data, analyze it, and use it to improve. Some challenges are distinctively tied to the specific nature of life in Israel. As a small country with a population of about 7 million, there are relatively limited resources available for evaluation. The volatility of the region and changes in political leadership can lead to quick shifts in priorities for government, nonprofits and funders.
Despite all of this, we were impressed by the consistent desire of everyone we met to learn more about how to improve by measuring the results of their work.
At a final convening that included most of those we had met over the past week, Paul Brest used an airline metaphor for evaluation. We expect pilots to set a course more specifically than ‘somewhere in England’, and unlike some social sector funders, we also expect to pay not only for the ‘direct costs’ of the pilot’s salary and the gas, but also for the indirect costs like training and maintenance (e.g. pay for evaluation and other ‘overhead’). One of the attendees suggested that sometimes the social sector’s work is more like that of ancient Chinese sailors who set off to discover new lands without a real sense of where they were headed, and frequently failed. A good discussion about the need for innovation and exploration, as well as honing the delivery of more or less proven methods nonetheless concluded that in either case – there’s a useful role – albeit different in different cases — for measurement.
