Skip to main content

A Different Way of Measuring Success

Image
By

What's on your top ten list of success indicators for your organization?  I suspect for most of us success has a lot to do with the number of people served -- visitors, members, ticket holders, participants in after-school programs.  Would a balanced budget, meeting or exceeding goal in a fundraising campaign, or growing invested funds be on the list?  

As so many cultural nonprofits now struggle for financial and programmatic equilibrium, are the turnstile and the cash drawer alone sufficient -- or even accurate -- indicators of organizational health and future well-being?  What about the importance of an organization's holdings or its positive impact on society?  Would the quality of your organization's work be a success indicator?  How would you measure it?

Five years ago, Maxwell L. Anderson, the current Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, took on the topic in his paper for the Getty Leadership Institute titled Metrics for Success in Art Museums.  Anderson posits that much of what art museums use as success indicators, such as attendance, membership or the number of exhibitions, are too widely variable for assessing organizational health over the longer term.  Instead, he urges that success indicators must:
  • be directly connected with the core values and mission of the organization
  • be reliable indicators of long-term organizational and financial health, and
  • be easily verified and reported
While Anderson focused exclusively on art museums, he has developed a standard that can be readily adapted to all cultural nonprofits, and probably most all nonprofits.  The metrics cluster around eleven features of an institution's activities, including quality of experience, fulfillment of the educational mandate, institutional reputation, management priorities, caliber and diversity of staff, and standards of governance.

Anderson's list of metrics has new saliency in 2009.  It deserves a (re)visit.  

Photo:  Measuring tape sphere (large) by Nick Sayers
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

By
THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into...
16 comments
Read more

What to Do With Dead Wood on Your Board?

By
MY POLL ASKED WHAT ONE BOARD DYNAMIC YOU would change this year and the top response was "remove dead wood". For my first post on this topic I'd like to start with two obvious facts: 1) most boards have some non-performing or under-performing board members AND 2) most boards already have mechanisms in place for removing dead wood...or at least the non-attending dead wood. Those mechanisms are found in the Bylaws and perhaps in a board job description. Few boards, it seems, invoke these mechanisms, mostly out of fear of offending the offender. We end up side-stepping the dead wood, dancing around it, ignoring it, wishing mightily it would go away. Oh, and complaining about it. So, even though the dead wood isn't doing much, it's sapping the energy and focus of many others. (There must be a Law of Physics about this!) Where to start and how to implement? While removing dead wood is not the most pleasant of responsibilities, it does not need to be -- and s...
2 comments
Read more

Change for Your Board in 2010: A Polling Update

By
WE'RE A DAY INTO MY LAST POLL (SEE RIGHT) AND the responses are clustering in two areas: 1) removing dead wood from the board and 2) using better/different tools to make decisions/evaluate performance. There are still six days left for your colleagues to cast their vote! In the meantime, those of you who are in need of tools for decision-making might want to check my posts on taking stock here , here and here .
Post a Comment
Read more