One of the nation’s nonprofit leaders on performance management is Congreso, which is also the 17th largest Latino nonprofit agency in the nation. Its president and CEO, Cynthia Figueroa recently wrote the latest in a series of perspective pieces from the front lines for The Center for Effective Philanthropy.
In it, Figueroa writes about the importance of building an integrated culture of performance within her nonprofit that is responsive to organizational and client needs, as opposed to assessing performance project by project in response to foundation and public sector requirements. She writes:
Congreso alone manages 13 different data systems based on contractual requirements from public and private sector funders. But, it is Congreso’s own unique database that allows the organization to view a full picture of the individuals we serve and look at performance management from a holistic manner, not just from the lens of one particular project, contract, or foundation.
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Organizations need to establish a culture of performance management where assessing results occurs regularly in an integrated approach at all levels of the organization, not just project- or grant-based levels. Does everyone in the agency talk about, review, and analyze data in your database?
Figueroa says it took her organization 10 years to move to a culture of performance management and that this transition occurred with the support of foundations that invested in their infrastructure, one that included building a data and evaluation department and investing in ETO Software.
Want to learn more about building a performance culture? The next PerformWell webinar will be devoted to “Creating a Performance Culture.” The two presenters are Isaac Castillo, Senior Research Scientist at Child Trends, Julie Russell, Deputy Director at St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund. To register, go here.