When you measure your charity’s performance, what do you focus on?

Do you focus on whether your group is within its budget, whether it is serving more people than it has in the past, or if it is receiving enough mentions in the news media?

Robert Thalhimer, senior vice president at the Community Foundation Serving Richmond and Central Virginia, encourages nonprofit leaders to question whether they are actually asking the right questions.

Instead of asking questions that can be answered with a few statistics, Mr. Thalhimer says charity leaders should instead focus on results. He borrows the concept from Marilee Goldberg Adams’ book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life.

“Are we really interested in how many people we served (an output)?” he writes on Philanthromedia “Or, do we care more about whether we changed their lives for the better (an outcome)?”

What questions does your charity ask when it measures its performance? What should other groups be asking? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.