What are the best ways to evaluate your performance in Philanthropy?

Smart goals don't help either if they are not aligned with the impact of philanthropic work. Therefore, philanthropists should not only look at the output, i.e. what and how many services a nonprofit project offers. The question is rather what difference a nonprofit makes with its work, what impact it achieves with which target groups. These impact goals should of course be formulated SMART.

Communication should be guided by an impact-oriented approach. Whether you are an employee of a non-profit or a philanthropist, the first question is what you want to achieve and with whom. You may have to legitimize your project to the board of a foundation. When communicating with cooperation partners, it may be more about learning together or celebrating successes. And with regard to philanthropists, you want to convince them to support your project. As different as the goals are, as different is the communication. Ask yourself what your counterpart is interested in; what information is relevant to them. Then think about channels & formats to target them. And, of course, consider how you can recognize the impact of your communication.

Planning, analyzing and then improving the work - the impact-oriented management cycle can sometimes be quite challenging - especially when the learning curve is very high, not all goals have been achieved and the next funds have to be raised at the same time. What is often neglected is celebrating the successes achieved and being celebrated by the philanthropists. This is not a nice to have. Celebrating is important for the impact of future projects. After all, the social challenges and successes achieved are what drive employees in nonprofits and motivate them to give more than 100 percent despite often precarious circumstances. And only with the best staff can the knowledge gained from learning be put into practice.

This article poses the right question by asking about ways to evaluate your performance. Too often philanthropy is focused on evaluating partners without looking at themselves. Here are some questions to consider: Is your grant application asking only the most essential information? Are you intentionally capturing learnings and applying them? How are you receiving and incorporating feedback from partners? GrantAdvisor is a safe way for people to give anonymous feedback and was very helpful for a past foundation team I was on in assessing ourselves. Emergent Learning is a set of principles and practices that were transformative in getting our foundation into the habit of learning and generating insights to improve our work.