My ears perked up when I heard the words “save you money” at a recent CSR event hosted by Jane Madden, SVP of CSR and Sustainability at Edelman.  The guest speaker, Sharon Feigon, CEO of I-Go Car Sharing, explained how her organization has grown beyond individuals to serve businesses and local governments.  “While most of our customers really believe in our social and environmental impact, it’s truly the price that makes or breaks the sale,” she said.  Currently a member of another car share program, I was intrigued.

‘Why measure?’ is a question that has been bandied about by social change agents —business people, nonprofit professionals, educators—for quite some time.  How we measure is also a source of debate.  From randomized testing to post-activity evaluation, there is no real consensus on how and why to measure.  But most people can agree that measurement is effective when it enables you to clarify desirable results, create a system to track progress, and communicate effectiveness.  However, this assumes that measurement is being used to highlight what’s working in real time, not to determine attribution after the fact.

Earlier this month, Starbucks hosted a Summit with leading corporations and international NGOs to discuss “Measuring the Value of Community Service”.  Mission Measurement facilitated this crucial discussion and helped tease out the social and business outcomes that corporate volunteerism advances.  Starbucks isn’t the first corporation or NGO to grapple with this question, but there are many challenges that have impeded a solution to measuring the value of corporate community service.

This week President Obama announced he “will seek an additional $1.35 billion in next year’s budget to expand the Race to the Top competition.” As states rush to submit their 1st round Race to the Top applications, let us pause for a moment and reflect on some lessons learned from this first round.

The New York Times education article In Race for U.S. School Grants Is a Fear of Winning challenged Illinois this week to think about its capacity to support Race to the Top initiative funded programs after the life of the 4 year grant.

We often start our workshops and training sessions with examples of Charity Navigator’s nonprofit ratings data. We compare an organization with a four star rating to one with a one star rating and based on the data and ask the group to select the organization that should receive a $10,000 grant.

In our quest to achieve a positive change in student outcomes, school culture indicators give us another data point to consider in the complex and ever changing equation for student success. As critical as knowing the quality of a teacher in his/her classroom, or the number of students served by a particular curricular implementation, having data that shows whether a school is on the right track for developing its desired cultural environment empowers principals and school staffs to make informed decisions about resources and enables them to make mid-course corrections before the end of the school year. 

The first time a client used the term “WIIFM” (pronounced whiff-um) in a sentence as though it were a real word, I thought perhaps she was speaking another language or using an industry-specific expression that I wasn’t familiar with.  I quickly learned that WIIFM is not only a part of the English language but also a concept that’s relevant to every industry and every project I’ve worked on.  WIIFM stands for “What’s In It For