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Does your nonprofit agency have a way to measure performance for your organization? Not just the financial measures, but mission delivery and the organization’s effectiveness? The tool agencies most commonly use to measure and evaluate the agency's overall performance is called a dashboard or sometimes a scorecard. Your agency performance reports should help you better lead your agency and make informed decisions. Recently, I heard two hybrid car owners with different models and years discuss how their dashboards provided information and the layout of their respective dashboards. It appeared one model had a dashboard that clearly defined the car’s performance and better reported what the engine was doing. The car owner stated simply, “because I have been monitoring what’s going on with the engine and the mileage performance, I’ve changed my driving style.” Just like your car’s dashboard, your organization’s dashboard should be designed to help monitor your agency’s performance...

I keep hearing this tentative questioning among my colleagues asking “how are you doing?” and the responses seem to be, “we’re working a lot harder to accomplish the same things with less.” Workloads have changed. Most aren’t complaining, they’re happy to have workloads. They’re even happier if their paychecks haven’t changed. You’ve heard the saying “work smarter, not harder.” In these times of financial flux, defining “smarter” takes on a broader meaning. Smarter may need to be redefined. Smarter in this economy may mean taking a hard look at resources and balancing what’s deliverable from a mission perspective against what you have or can count on having. What are the agency’s core services and how best can services be provided to those who count on them? It’s important to serve those that count on your agency’s services well while not letting the quality of your programs suffer. Internally is your agency operating efficiently? Externally, who might want to share resources...