The Limits of ‘Usefulness’

“Nothing in excess,” part of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, is an idea our society has trouble with. Just look at America’s obesity epidemic. The Greeks knew that things that are valuable in moderation, like food, become dangerous when taken to an extreme. Such is the case with the nonprofit world’s emphasis on “outcomes.”

It’s a sound idea in moderation, because it encourages nonprofit leaders to ask themselves why they are doing what they are doing, and it focuses their attention on whether what they desire to happen is actually being achieved. Those questions are basic to good management and financial stewardship.

The mischief has entered through the back door of evaluation. Using logic models and “theories of change,” evaluators tell nonprofit groups that whatever they are accomplishing directly is only an “output,” and that far more valuable are “outcomes” that lie down the road.

Thus it is not enough for a community-development group to build houses and help low-income families buy them. There has to be an outcome beyond that. Whether that outcome is the revitalization of the neighborhood, the increased wealth of the families, or something else is less important than the mischievous assumption that another end always lies beyond whatever work a nonprofit organization is doing.

The mischief has spread to grant-proposal writing. Charities can hardly ask for money anymore to support what they are doing — they have to claim that it is in the service of some ultimate outcome.

At a recent meeting of nonprofit organizations, a woman who runs a literacy organization asked me how she could show what the outcomes of literacy are. She said grant makers don’t want to support literacy per se. It is not enough for her to demonstrate that the people her organization teaches do in fact learn to read. She has to show that, having learned to read, other wonderful things happen to her clients. Arts organizations find it much easier to raise money to use art for economic revitalization or to reach troubled children than to simply create, perform, or exhibit art.

The insistence on outcomes devalues ends by turning them into mere means to further ends. Owning one’s own home has been called the American dream: an ideal, an ultimate. We cheapen that when we insist on calling that an “output” that is only a “milestone” to a further “outcome.”

The ancient Greeks saw truth and beauty as ideals, but today the research institute aimed at bringing more truth into the world must show how the new knowledge will benefit children and families, and the arts organization aimed at bringing more beauty into the world must show how it creates a 24-hour downtown with vibrant pedestrian and restaurant life. Truth and beauty cease to be ideals and become commodities, to be favored if they are useful, and discarded if they are not.

What’s more, once this kind of evaluation mentality takes hold, things keep snowballing and getting worse. Today’s “output” has value only to the extent that it helps us reach tomorrow’s “outcome,” but when we arrive at tomorrow’s “outcome,” we find that it has value only insofar as it is useful in attaining some “ultimate outcome” that lies still further on.

Of course, “ultimate outcome” is an oxymoron in a world where we have discarded dreams and truth and beauty early on in the game.

Relying solely on how useful something is to judge the value of everything is not an obsession of just the nonprofit world. It is characteristic of modern society. Nonprofit groups have simply absorbed this idea without question, and much effort goes into things like evaluation and proposal-writing workshops to help folks do it better.

But nonprofit groups are supposed to be different from other organizations.

When Americans want to preserve and promote values other than making a buck, they come together in nonprofit organizations. When they want to solve problems they see in society, they come together in nonprofit organizations. When they aspire to make the world a better place, they come together in nonprofit organizations. And that points to the real danger of the overzealous application of outcomes thinking: By undermining the value of our aspirations, we take away the purpose and meaning of the work of nonprofit organizations.

By all means, let us moderately apply the discipline of assessing our effectiveness at achieving our missions and purposes. But let us also put “usefulness” in its place, and preserve the values that have attracted so many people to the nonprofit world in the first place. Then, perhaps, we will have something to tell society at large about the limits of “usefulness.”

Kennard T. Wing is an independent consultant in Haverford, Pa., who helps nonprofit groups improve their effectiveness through research and evaluation efforts.