Identifying Effective Charity Services

Steve Butz, a charity employee turned software entrepreneur, wants to provide donors with a better way to identify effective social-service organizations.

Through an informal group known as the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, Mr. Butz and David E.K. Hunter, who previously worked at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, have developed a set of 26 questions and statements designed to measure how effectively an organization provides services and improves people’s lives.

Evaluators — either within an organization or hired from outside — would be asked to answer each question by selecting one of the answers provided.

Most offer a choice of the following phrases: “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,” “agree,” “strongly agree.”

Following is a sampling of the statements that Mr. Butz and Mr. Hunter have devised. They will be discussed at a meeting of nonprofit experts later this month.

• The organization measures and analyzes the impact its staff members have on those served.
• In the past year, the organization has made a significant change because of information gained from data collected and analyzed.
• Some of the data the organization collects is never or rarely reported on, and may be unnecessary.
• There are things the organization is very good at, which it never collects data about or reports on.
• When writing annual reports or other updates, the organization spends a great deal of time getting data into a usable format.

A full draft is available online.