Order Reprints

GRAND RAPIDS — When they first starting popping up at tech companies in the mid-2000s, digital dashboards were being hailed as the CEO’s killer app.

Like a car’s instrument panel, the digital dashboard displays the company’s critical metrics in easy-to-read graphics to help executives assess company performance and steer the corporation.

The dashboard concept sounded pretty good to executives at the Grand Rapids Community Foundation when it set out in 2007 to measure the impact of its $10 million in annual investments in nonprofit organizations.  They figured out quickly that the data behind the dashboard was going to be critical and very tough to quantify.

“Foundations everywhere are trying to figure out how you measure the effectiveness of grants since we (individually) are such a small part of impact,” said Marcia Rapp, VP of programs at the GRCF. “We were asking: ‘How can you tell if your work is really having an impact aside from stories and counting heads?’ Everyone is trying to do this, but it is an art right now; it is not yet a science.”

The GRCF worked with the Community Research Institute at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy to develop NOVAH, a framework for decision-making around the foundation’s target areas: academic achievement, economic prosperity, healthy ecosystems, healthy people, social enrichment and vibrant neighborhoods. The Community Research Institute worked with the foundation to determine measurements that would indicate the effectiveness of grants in the target areas.

“We wanted something we could use – the most important thing that came out of it was that it established a framework for measurement as we looked at what to fund,” Rapp said. “Measurables became the first lens when considering a program and whether we should ask for a full proposal.”

The GRCF and CRI then worked to build a user-friendly online dashboard program where nonprofit organizations could input their data, reducing headaches associated with reporting data to fundraisers.

Rapp admits that it was challenging at first for the foundation to stick to the standards it agreed upon, but that it makes its decision-making process more consistent and transparent, reducing the chances that grants are made based on the whims of a particular staff or board member.

“We put it out there so people know why we’re saying no or yes. We can say why it is a fit for us. The change was we became more strategic and professional. We have to ask each other very hard questions,” Rapp said. “We don’t say, ‘Well, it looks like a good organization,’ which isn’t necessarily a bad way to go, but we take it a step further. It feels good to me that we have a framework for decision making – it is not the feeling of a particular board or staff (member).”

  Order Reprints

TAGS:

• grand rapids community foundation
• novah