Links and Resources On the World Wide Web
Outcomes Frameworks
Paul Duigan has put together a number of outcomes related websites which are accessed via www.outcomescentral.org. This site is useful when thinking about outcomes frameworks that you can then populate with your own content. The material on the site ranges from academic material about outcomes theory to do-it-yourself easy outcomes – working out where you are going and how you are going to measure getting there.
Not Profit Organisations –General
“Every nonprofit organisation, no matter what its mission or scope, needs three kinds of performance metrics: to measure its success in mobilizing its resources, its staff's effectiveness on the job and its progress in fulfilling its mission”… an article from The McKinsey Quarterly http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com
Non Profit Quarterly
In 1998 the American based Non profit quarterly magazine ran a whole edition called Exploring Evaluation: What We Measure and Why and there are some great articles including those we used for the NGO day at the recent He Kakano Conference http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/section/183.html
Measuring Entrepreneurial Activity
New Metrics for Today's Social Entrepreneurs http://www.socialedge.orgs a discussion page from Social Edge a social entrepreneur’s website.
Community Outcomes
The Community Outcomes Process is a key component of the Local Government Act 2002, where local government identify and measure what is important to local communities through a process of consultation, planning and reporting
http://www.msd.govt.nz
Social Outcomes
Achieving Better Social Outcomes in New Zealand through Collaboration: Perspectives from the United States - http://www.ssc.govt.nz A State Services commission working paper written by Lynne Dovey is comprehensive backgrounder as to why it is critical for collaboration between the Government and the community if we are to achieve improved social outcomes.
‘The research demonstrates that in a systemic approach both bottom up and top down approaches to collaboration are important, as are outcomes planning, performance measurement and a mix of strategies to address underlying problems. There are deeper implications for change within our public management system, however, if collaboration is to be truly successful. These include moving to power sharing and joint accountability arrangements and extending the role of government to that of enabler. Methods of underpinning these new approaches include creating incentives for collaboration, longer term, relational contracting and distributed leadership’.
Future Proofing
Blue Avocado is a nonprofit online magazine for community nonprofits. This website containes articles which provide insight and ideas on a wide range of topics. For example an article by Tim Wolfred Psy.D., Senior Project Director at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in San Francisco, 'Succession should be a topic broached even when no one is anticipating a change in leaders'.
Organisational Mergers - The current economic environment might well encourage organisations to consider merging to extend the range of services, reduce transaction costs and achieve economies of scale and efficiencies. An article in the Standford University, Centre for Social Innovation written by David La Piana - The Standford Social Innovation Review on 'Merging Wisely' - questions whether mergers create more problems than they solve and should consideration be given to a variety of ways of working together.
An announcement of a bold merger between two large mental health and addiction service providers in New Zealand can be found here.
