Moving briefly away from the nitty-gritty of metrics, I want to spend some time on the bigger-picture: namely, why we measure and what is measurable.
Why do we measure results of an art project or nonprofit? Artists and nonprofits seek out metrics for several reasons — to provide required metrics for a grant application or report; to prove that donations were used well; to evaluate programming for renewal or expansion; to establish their successes and shortcomings in achieving their mission.
Basically, these motivations can be divided into two types:
- because someone else wants the data (e.g., donors, grantmakers, government agencies).
- because the artist/organization has an interest in self-assessment.
In the case of the former, groups have little to no investment in the data itself, only in the outcome. In the latter, however, the motivation to establish the value of the organization or project indicates an investment in what is measured and the story that can be told using that data. (Also, as I wrote previously, frustration with the metrics required by funders can result in organizations getting invested in adopting metrics relevant to their specific mission and programs.)
As Andrew Taylor wrote recently,
If you care internally about good decisions, and metrics will help you (and they will, if they’re specific), then measure. If you are specifically aware of external value that will flow your way if you can express your impact in specific ways, then measure. If neither of these is true, then really, don’t bother. Measuring won’t make a measurable difference.
Measuring for the sake of measurement sends you down a rabbit hole of wasted time and energy. In order to achieve metrics that are worthwhile and reliable, requires establishing goals, monitoring/soliciting data, sorting and analyzing the data and sharing it with stakeholders/leaders. These are not simple tasks, as highlighted by Bill Gates in his 2013 Annual Letter for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal-in a feedback loop […]. This may seem pretty basic, but it is amazing to me how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. […] I think a lot of efforts fail because they don’t focus on the right measure or they don’t invest enough in doing it accurately.
But what’s the right measure? And what is actually measurable? It’s fairly common for nonprofits and community art projects to be able to establish some basic facts and figures relating to attendance, demographics, and dollars raised. Sometimes these are enough to demonstrate impact or value in a short-term way, but, in general, the results side of nonprofits remains complex and difficult to measure. Just as website analytics have evolved beyond mere clicks and page views to developing a relationship ladder (e.g., converting visitors into subscribers), nonprofits should be willing to investigate and pillage the metrics used by other industries:
- What is the Klout of an artist or nonprofit?
- What can arts programs, in particular, learn from the kind of academic and international research done by the Stanford Social Innovation Review?
- How can Obama’s campaign inspire the efforts of nonprofits?
- The music industry has been forced to adapt its metrics due to YouTube and social media; how can nonprofits learn from these new metrics?
All efforts can benefit from these approaches — in both looking beyond our immediate sphere for inspiration, and in stepping back and asking exactly why we want to measure in the first place.
