Faced with changing economic conditions and increased competition, nonprofit organizations are increasingly being pressed to measure and report their outcomes to funders and other constituents. At the same time, service organizations are increasingly aware of the need to create feedback loops involving constituents as a way of improving their services.

How nonprofits measure the impact of their work is the subject of "Outcome Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations: Current Practices and Recommendations," a new report from Independent Sector and the Urban Institute. Based on phone interviews and findings from three dozen organizations that responded to Independent Sector's 1998 Measures Survey, the report provides nonprofit managers and leaders with practical information on assessing and reporting on the outcomes of their programs as well as examples of procedures that organizations have implemented for outcome measurement.

Key findings of the report, which was written by the Urban Institute's Elaine Morley, Elisa Vinson, and Harry Hatry, include the fact that while most organizations collected information on client condition shortly after completion of services, fewer than a third sought information at some period after services were delivered. Moreover, most organizations did not use sophisticated data collection techniques and very few were able to provide the cost of their outcome measurement activities.

"The results of the survey show that nonprofits clearly are beginning to use outcome measurement and in a variety of ways. Even more nonprofit organizations — especially the smaller ones — would adopt outcome measurement tools if more technical assistance were available from national associations, community foundations, and local governments," noted co-author Morley.

To download an executive summary of the report, visit: http://www.independentsector.org/programs/research/outcomes.pdf.