A majority of nonprofit leaders say their organizations lack the support they need to use performance measures that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work, a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds.

According to the report, Room for Improvement: Foundation's Support of Nonprofit Performance Assessment (16 pages, PDF), 81 percent of the 177 nonprofit leaders surveyed agreed that organizations should use performance measures. But a large majority (71 percent) reported having received no foundation support — monetary or non-monetary — for their assessment efforts. "Nonprofits are routinely castigated for their unwillingness to make a hard-nosed assessment of their impact," said CEP president Phil Buchanan. "But when we actually stop and listen to nonprofits, a very different picture emerges. The hundred and seventy-seven nonprofit leaders we surveyed overwhelmingly care about measuring their impact. What they need is help — financial and practical help from their funders."

Conducted as part of CEP's Grantee Voice project, which involved three hundred nonprofit leaders from across the country who agreed to complete short surveys about topics relevant to their experiences working with funders, the report also found that only 32 percent of respondents said their funders have been helpful in terms of assessing their progress toward their goals.

"It's important to understand that nonprofits aren't simply asking for more money to assess and improve their performance — though that would certainly be a welcome start," said Buchanan. "They also want to have meaningful discussions with their funders about which measures are important and how best to make those measurements."