#18: How Can You Prove Your Outcomes Are Worth the Money?

Oh, finally someone has said something sensible about outcome measurement. What do they say? You can't prove it -- and, it can be counter productive to try.

Stanford Social Innovation Review : Articles : Drowning in Data (August 30, 2006): "The only surefire way to show that a program is helping people more than they could have helped themselves is to conduct expensive and lengthy studies involving control groups. Because so many people underestimate the difficulty and cost of demonstrating impact, nonprofits often collect reams of data that are not only useless, but also misleading. As a result, evaluation is failing to help make the social sector more effective."

Yes, the team needs to have a logic model and identify goals. But, my money is on program improvement, not long term outcomes.

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