Online Resource Aims to Improve Nonprofit Performance

Research and educational organization The Urban Institute and Social Solutions, provider of performance management software for nonprofits, recently announced that they're collaborating to create a online resource for nonprofit organizations looking to enhance their performance.

The Outcomes and Effective Practices Portal is a free tool that will feature guides that share best practices to help organizations better serve stakeholders and assess program effectiveness. It was unveiled at Social Solutions' recent ETOlution 2009 conference in Baltimore, Md., and is scheduled to go live next spring.

FundRaising Success recently had the chance to speak with Jeff Mason, vice president of Social Solutions, to learn more about the tool and how he thinks it will impact the nonprofit sector. Here's what he had to say:

FundRaising Success: Why did you decide to create this portal?
Jeff Mason: I sort of wear two hats. I'm a vice president at Social Solutions. I'm also the chair of something called the Alliance for Effective Social Investing. The mission of the alliance is to drive more money to high-performing nonprofits.

The idea is that if more money goes to high-performing nonprofits, then more organizations will want to be high-performing. And that all comes out of this whole notion that today a lot of nonprofits are rewarded for being able to tell heartwarming stories or simply for having the right relationships or developing a recognized brand — and not so much around their performance.

And so there's sort of this movement — and it's not just the people at the alliance. There's a lot of people that are talking about this and working toward this. There is this movement to start to fund organizations based on their performance or their capacity to perform and to generate social value. So there's a lot of work going on on that side.