As promised in our October newsletter (click here to subscribe), Insight Partners has some exciting things planned for our third year, including this blog series by guest blogger Julia Pickup, MSW, LCSW. Julia is a highly skilled therapist, clinical supervisor, instructor, and program director. She thrives on developing clinicians to reach their full potential, building team[…]
Management and quality guru W. Edwards Deming said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Does that sound like one of your committee meetings? Lots of opinions? Do your committees glance at reports you spent hours preparing and then say things like, “And?” or “So?” or “Yeah, but . . .” Do your[…]
For years, I’ve had an image in my head that represented the results of nonprofits’ often piecemeal, reactive efforts to respond to stakeholder demands and ill-fitting funding opportunities. It can be a patched together, mismatched, less-than-functional mishmash of unclear intentions and unfocused efforts. In my research, I came across a term in home remodeling: subtraction[…]
As a consultant and grant-maker, I’ve read a lot of outcome statements – the good, the bad, and the ugly. From that experience, I’ve identified my top 10 tips for writing strong outcome statements. Overall, if nothing else, make sure your outcomes are meaningful, measurable, and manageable. This requires that they be specific. Read on[…]
In my last post, I argued that one of the main reasons that front-line staff (case managers, therapists, youth workers, nurses, mentors, volunteers) in nonprofits might not get invested in collecting and using data is because it’s the wrong data. Too often, nonprofits settle for counting what’s easy to count rather than measuring what matters[…]