Video: Making Measurement Work for Fundraising

After measuring your nonprofit’s impact, deciding how to present data results to donors can be tricky. It’s an issue that gets a lot of attention at Youth Villages, a Washington, D.C.-area charity dedicated to measuring outcomes of its programs to help troubled youth and their families.

Richard Shaw, the organization’s chief development officer, sat down with The Chronicle at our first live event, Philanthropy NEXT, to discuss how Youth Villages measures results and organizes appeals around the findings.

In this interview he talks about getting funding for measurement, ensuring program and research staffs mesh, and how his organization weighs emotional versus data-driven approaches in direct mail, grant proposals, and appeals to wealthy individuals.

Watch the full above.

Transcript

EDEN STIFFMAN: Hi. I’m Eden Stiffman, a reporter with “The Chronicle of Philanthropy.” I’m joined tonight by Richard Shaw, the chief development officer at Youth Villages. Thanks for being with us.

RICHARD SHAW: Absolutely.

EDEN STIFFMAN: You measure many aspects of your programs. How do you decide what data points to use when appealing to donors?

RICHARD SHAW: Yeah. So we do measure a lot. And that data is used both to help us perform better as an organization, as well as provide better and more effective services for kids and families. So the one piece of data that we hold ourselves most accountable to is really after kids have left our program, 12 months later, are they living successfully in the home, in a stable, loving family?

And so while we measure lots of things, we realize that so many of the services that are provided in our sector do not stick. And so the kids will, a lot of times, be in facilities or be in group homes or be in foster placement. They’ll end up going home. And without the right services in that home, a lot of those kids end up coming back into the system.

So our big goal is to provide the care they need while they’re in our services, but also to make sure that when we leave and they’re back with their family, that they’re living successfully one year post-discharge. And that’s the one we hold ourselves most accountable for. And we vary anywhere from 82% to 84% success rate with those at that one key metric.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And how do you think about it differently, or do you think about it differently when appealing to, say, a big donor versus sending out a direct mail appear or writing a foundation grant?

RICHARD SHAW: Yeah. So the thing is for us, our sweet spot has been more so foundations that really care about quality and care about outcomes and want to see organizations that are a strong, high-performing organizations scale and help more kids and families. And so that’s kind of been our sweet spot. Those funders typically are probably a little more data driven and really are in search of things that can be scaled and, again, really try to make a dent in a lot of these social problems in our country.

So that’s been our sweet spot. In terms of individuals, we have a lot of wealthy individuals that we appeal to and work with. And again, I think a lot of those individuals want to see the same types of data points. And that is, how do I know what you’re doing works? And how has it been validated? Unfortunately, most individuals that make donations or giving decisions, they’re doing that not based upon research or any kind of comparative data.

And in the sector, there hasn’t been a lot of comparative data. I think 3% of wealthy donors actually are going, looking at research, comparing organizations, then making an investment. 3%. So that means 97% are not. So I think it’s important for us to realize that. Hopefully over time, I think the pendulum will swing to where more people want more information to know if what I’m investing in is better than something else.

So if I care about impacting kids that are growing up in the foster care system, if I invest in this organization, I’m going to get X. If I invest in this organization, I’m going to get Y. How can I know I’m investing in the better of these organizations, or the more important work? And I think for most individuals, like all of us, we’re moved by emotions.

And so I do find that, especially with direct mail and direct marketing, we want to tell a story. We want tell a story about a life we’ve impacted, and we want to do that well. We don’t need to overburden them with a bunch of numbers. We can say we serve 22,000 kids a year. That doesn’t really matter. What’s the one life you’ve changed? And that’s what people are going to remember and they’re going to invest in that. So that’s what we try to do for individuals versus foundations.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And how do program staff and development staff work together in youth villages.

RICHARD SHAW: Yeah, so I think we’ve — we have 2,800 employees. We’re a large nonprofit. I work really closely with our chief clinical officer and our head of research to really dig down into the programs to kind of see where we’re making the biggest impact. And you know, I would say that, at times, sometimes as a large organization it’s hard to make those connections consistently.

But at the end of the day, it’s the program staff that are doing the work. It’s the front line staff that are with kids and families every day. And when you meet — if you were to meet our staff, you would see this passion that radiates throughout all of our services, is that we hold ourselves accountable and we do whatever it takes and we have passionate people that want to change lives.

The great thing about it is, for the program staff, for a lot of organizations, they don’t necessarily see the impact of their work because people are not measuring what happens when people leave or when people kind of move out of your programs. I think the fact that we’ve collected data for so long, I think our employees — while it’s a very, very difficult job — I think they see the result of their work.

And I think that is inspiring to kind of keep them moving forward, working with very difficult families and children sometimes, and doing it so well. So I think we work well together. I think our research team and our program team are outstanding. And I think they’re always providing information to us that we can then go out and use to effectively communicate our organization and our mission better than we did yesterday.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And we’ve talked a lot about measurement and I’m curious about how you fund measurement. Have you ever sought a grant that can help you measure your programs better?

RICHARD SHAW: Yes. I mean, again, so a lot of our funding comes from government sources. Government typically doesn’t pay. They pay for you to care for a kid. They don’t pay for the actions. They don’t pay for the research. They don’t pay for the things that basically it takes for you to go from being a good organization to being a great organization.

We have gotten some grants for research over the years. And I think specifically in the early days, we got some grants that kind of started apart. And with just two people, which was a program person and basically a person who set up the systems to collect the data and mine the data for information — you know, today I think one of the big reasons that our largest funders are investing in our work is that we have 18 people, 18 FTEs that are working in research.

And really with the work of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and some other kind of impact investors that have helped us kind of really expand our vision for what would be possible if we were able to do more work with more families across the country, they’ve invested in allowing us to expand not just the staff, but a lot of the platforms we use to capture information, to be able to pull that information on a regular basis, not just monthly to where it’s lagging, but on a daily basis so that our people in the field providing the services, they know what’s going on that day with real data.

And I think again, that’s come mostly through some of our grants through the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and other funders that have been interested in not just serving more kids, but doing it better.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And finally, we’re heading into the last few months of the year. I’m curious what you’re thinking about and if you have any recommendations for what other charity fundraisers should be keeping top of mind this time of year.

RICHARD SHAW: So I will say this — fortunately for Youth Villages, our fiscal year ends June 30. So I do think — I’m glad that we’re not an organization where our fiscal year ends December 31, because I do think it puts an enormous pressure on organizations. And again, I feel pressure every day to raise more because I see the impact of our work and I know that we need more resources to help more kids.
But if we don’t — if by January 2nd somehow we didn’t exceed our goals, we’re not in the position where we have to make big cuts to dramatically make up for that. We raise money year round. And we do — I mean, again, overall this year we’ll raise about $36 million. A large portion of that comes from about 15 funders, funders that are really interested in us growing and getting better.

The rest will come through donations, from $10 to $2 to $100 from people all across the country. So we will be hitting it hard the next three months. But I’ll say I feel fortunate that if we don’t do as well as we’ve hoped, that come January, we can kind of double down and really focus on not just looking at the tax year, but just looking, again, in telling our story and doing it better for the next six months.

EDEN STIFFMAN: Well, thank you for joining us.

RICHARD SHAW: Absolutely.

EDEN STIFFMAN: We appreciate it.