Beyond the Grant Proposal: A Case Study in Evaluating Nonprofit Organizations

 Beyond the Grant Proposal:

A Case Study in Evaluating Nonprofit Organizations

Thursday, February 4 | 1:00 – 3:00pm ET

For many grantmakers, identifying, assessing, vetting, and ultimately recommending organizations for funding represents a significant portion of our work. Yet determining whether an organization is positioned to use philanthropic resources well is rarely straightforward. We have grant proposals, financial statements, annual reports, site visits, strategic plans, program data, and conversations with organizational leaders. The challenge is knowing what to look for, which questions to ask, and how to interpret what we find.

For almost two decades, Paul Penley has been developing and refining an approach to doing this well. His work eventually became GoodOps. First, OpsData, a two page annually updated organizational profile, brings together 150 data points about nonprofit leadership, strategy, finances, and impact. Second, the OpScore benchmarks that data against 50 standards for nonprofit operational excellence. Together, the two step framework provides concrete insight into organizational strengths and weaknesses that can inform funding decisions. (See an example of this below for the organization Seed Effect who has given their premission to share their data more broadly.) 

PCP is a community rich in different approaches to grantmaking, and this session is not intended to suggest there is a single right way to evaluate nonprofit organizations. Instead, we are featuring GoodOps as a particularly developed approach and a strong case study through which members can examine their own practices, sharpen their questions, and consider what might be useful in their own contexts.

In this extended two hour Learning Lab, Paul will take PCP members inside his approach. Using real organizational examples, he will walk through key components in five major areas of inquiry: Program Strategy, Measurement, Money, Management, and Governance. He will explore questions such as: What can several years of program data reveal that a single year cannot? What benchmarks make a reported outcome meaningful or not? What might revenue composition, reserves, and donor retention tell us about an organization’s ability to execute its plans? What questions about leadership and governance can help us better understand an organization’s durability during transition?

The session will also explore what happens after the information is analyzed. Paul will share how he uses the data to identify potential strengths and vulnerabilities, guide follow up inquiry, and structure grants to shore up operational weaknesses or capitalize on strengths. Throughout the session, there will be opportunities for questions and discussion as we move through each of the five areas.

The goal is to help members strengthen how they evaluate organizations and make funding decisions. We hope members leave with sharper questions to ask, additional data points to consider, and practical ideas they can adapt or incorporate into their own assessment, due diligence, and grantmaking processes. Members will also be introduced to the opportunity to access OpsData for organizations in their grant portfolios.

No one can know everything happening inside an organization, but we can know more than we do now. This conversation will offer one thoughtful and rigorous approach for doing so while inviting members to consider what they can learn from it for their own grantmaking.

Seed Effect OpScore

Presenter:

Paul Penley
Executive Director, Ledbetter Foundation

Paul Penley, PhD, is Executive Director of the Terry and Laurie Ledbetter Foundation and previously spent nearly 15 years with Excellence in Giving, where he helped donors develop effective grantmaking strategies and evaluate nonprofits in dozens of nations from Oxford to the Philippines, Nicaragua to Uganda. Paul has presented his approach to effective philanthropy at community foundations, Philanthropy Roundtable meetings, The Gathering, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and at Yale Philanthropy Conferences. He created the GoodOps system to assess nonprofit organizational maturity in the USA and direct executive teams how to strengthen their operations. He has built nonprofit performance management tools to measure outcomes, optimize org charts, develop strategic plans, and design programs. As Chief Investment Officer of the Kingdom Giving Fund, he scaled organizations with growth capital to achieve 10X results. Recently, he created the LeadBETTER Forum to improve nonprofit C-level competency and the GrantBETTERGroup to swap intel among foundations to inform more effective grantmaking. Paul loves flyfishing, research, and writing books, and lives in Colorado Springs, CO with his wife where he parents his six children.