How should a nonprofit manager respond when a significant donor asks for proof of his or her contribution's impact on a particular social issue?
This is the question behind a new article published at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Author Julia Hanna reports on the work of HBS associate professor Alnoor Ebrahim. To help nonprofit leaders determine when they should reasonably attempt to assess impact, Ebrahim offers a contingency framework for measuring performance. "The basic idea is that not everyone needs to measure impact, and that what you should measure is contingent on what you're trying to achieve," he states. "That's affected by two things: your theory of change and your operational strategy."
