What’s more important: Measuring the success of individual charities or measuring whether whole neighborhoods or broader regions that charities assist are improving?

Nonprofit officials are debating this idea on the blog of Ken Berger, chief executive of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog in Mahwah, N.J.

As part of an ongoing discussion about how Charity Navigator should change its rating system to examine the effectiveness of charities, Hildy Gottlieb, a nonprofit consultant, argues that the measurement efforts have been slightly off course. Focusing on individual charities ignores the big picture, she says.

“Will we continue to measure the individual parts of the whole, with virtually no regard to the ultimate outcome — community improvement?” she writes on Mr. Berger’s blog. “Or will we devote the considerable brain-power of this sector towards developing indicators and systems that measure what we really want to see — improvement in our communities?”

In the blog comments, several people support Ms. Gottlieb’s emphasis on “community-wide improvement.”

In response, Mr. Berger writes: “Given the sorry state of affairs in the [nonprofit] sector, where most do not measure themselves, we believe it is going to be a long time coming before individual measurement happens for most, let alone community-wide measurement! We believe that this individual effort must come first before we can talk in a substantive way about community measures, not the other way around.”

What do you think?