Outcome Accountability: How
Far Are We Willing to Go?
George E. Mitchell
City University of New York (CCNY)
Outcome Accountability
• When asked to define organizational
effectiveness:
– Leaders say their organizations are effective when
they can show that they are accomplishing what
they promised to accomplish
• This definition of organizational effectiveness I
have taken to calling ‘outcome accountability’
– So what happens if we take this concept of
outcome accountability seriously at a systemic
level?
The Challenge
• We want to construct a system to:
– Encourage more efficient social investment
– Help match social investors with appropriate social
investments
– Reward more effective organizations
– Promote learning within and across organizations
• However, we face constraints:
– Limited financial and human resources
– First-mover ambiguity (social investment
intermediaries, designation agencies, IRS, NPOs?)
– WE SIMPLY DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT DATA
From Overhead to Outcomes
• Accountability systems driven by data availability
– Accountability 1.0: Financial benchmarking (Form 990,
financial statements)
– Accountability 2.0: Financial benchmarking and
transparency (Form 990, financial statements,
websites)
– Accountability 3.0: Outcome accountability (???)
• How could we get to an accountability system
that would truly allocate capital based on
organizational effectiveness?
Outcome Accountability
• If we want a mechanism to efficiently allocate
capital in the nonprofit sector we need to know:
– What specific goals an NPO is trying to accomplish
– What progress an NPO is making toward each goal
– How an NPO is allocating its resources across its goals
• Where do we find this information?
– Websites?
– Annual reports?
– Forms 990?
Consider Part III of the Form 990
What would be needed:
• An NPO states its annual
goals at year-start and its
annual accomplishments at
year-end
• An NPO allocates all of its
annual spending across all
of its annual goals
• An NPO is able to provide
reasonable evidence of its
annual progress toward
each annual goal
Outcome Accountability
• Implies a measure of organizational effectiveness
(or evaluator confidence)
– Think of it as a budget-weighted measure of promisekeeping
– Unique to each NPO yet comparable across NPOs
• More importantly, in equilibrium we achieve the
desired information disclosure
– Organizational and programmatic effectiveness
– Programmatic cost-effectiveness and efficiency
– Benefits: efficiency, matching, learning, etc.
The Problems of Information
Generation and Disclosure
• The underlying problem is the lack of meaningful,
consistent evaluation across the NPO sector
• The proximate problem is the lack of a standard
disclosure format for outcome accountability
• Regardless of the details, if NPOs do not articulate their
goals and report their achievements and related costs
we will never know whether NPOs are effective,
efficient or cost-effective and resource allocation will
largely remain systemically arbitrary
• How far are we willing to go for a more accountable
and efficient nonprofit sector?
Conclusion
• Email: [email protected]
• Transnational NGO Initiative at Syracuse
University:
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan_tngo.
aspx