There is no such thing as a “non-profit organization”.
Many people feel that “non-profit” is a less than ideal term. For instance, it has been said that non-profit organizations shouldn’t be defined by what they are not. But doesn’t every NPO need to make a profit to survive—let alone to thrive?
The non-profit world would profit from adopting business practices of the for-profit world. Take publicly traded companies. They reveal financial data, and this transparency allows companies to measure themselves against benchmarks in their categories.
Say you’re opening a soup kitchen. How many people are other soup kitchens feeding per dollar they raise? It sure would be great if you could measure your organization against certain ratios or metrics.
Plus, to have the numbers of the top performers in their sector could provide impetus for NPO’s to achieve even greater things. Or if you’re struggling but your ratios are good, then you know there’s at least one unnoticed inefficiency.
The NPO sphere is in crisis. Transparent metrics could be one solution to this quagmire.
OC
