Designing and Implementing a Program Measurement System

Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW) is a nonprofit organization located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, focused on building management capacity and developing solutions for other nonprofit organizations. A small, but robust, organization in a period of growth, NEW was in need of a performance measurement system to track program effectiveness and assess impact. NEW requested a Capstone team to develop a system to help NEW manage programs and operations more effectively, make strategic decisions, develop goals and objectives, demonstrate impact to funders, and hold the organization accountable to stakeholders. Building upon NEW’s programmatic logic models, the Capstone team worked closely with NEW staff to develop a deep understanding of each program’s theory of change and current measurement practices. The team researched best practices in program measurement for capacity-building organizations, developed tracking metrics, designed a dashboard, and made a series of process recommendations to help NEW better collect and analyze its internal data.