When a 7.0 earthquake flattened Haiti in 2010, millions of donors rushed to help, funnelling money to a large global humanitarian organisation. Contributions climbed to half a billion dollars in one of the most successful online fundraising campaigns ever. But five years later, only six homes had been rebuilt.
Not for Profits, including the American Red Cross, have learned plenty since 2010. Although the organisation continued to defend its disaster relief efforts, it didn’t provide a public summary of how its donations had been spent. Nor would it ever. Investigative reports showed that the Not for Profit had outsourced Haitian projects to local affiliates and lacked the accounting mechanisms to connect the dollars it raised to outcomes achieved. While it’s possible that the organisation had indeed rebuilt entire Haitian villages, it couldn’t prove it, leaving its public reputation in shambles for a few years.
Stories likes these make donors distrust Not for Profits and Not for Profit executives squirm. Charity leaders know how hard it is to convey a mission’s impact to supporters. Doing so is made more difficult by confusing Not for Profit accounting regulations and a philanthropic culture that hamstrings them from fully delivering, much less evaluating their programs.
In this report, Connecting Dollars To Outcomes, NetSuite surveyed 353 Not for Profit executives in order to better understand the challenges of effectively measuring outcomes. The result is a deep dive into the challenges along with five solutions to bolster the infrastructure needs of Not for Profits.