Results Accountability

by Veena Pankaj

What is Results Accountability and how can you make it work for your organization?  If you are affiliated with the public sector there’s no doubt that you’ve heard of outcomes measurement, logic models, results accountability, performance budgets and many other frameworks for performance measurement.   These concepts and frameworks are driven by the ever-increasing need for accountability.   Nonprofits are accountable to their Board of Directors, their constituencies, and their funders.  Foundations are accountable to their Boards of Trustees, grantees, and communities they work in.  There are so many different levels of accountability – how does it all fit together? 

Unlike for-profit organizations that can illustrate success via profit margins, public sector organizations have to demonstrate the difference they are making in the communities they work in.  Results Accountability is an action-oriented methodology for producing measurable improvements for customers and communities, developed by Mark Friedman (author of Trying Hard is Not Good Enough).  This framework is becoming increasingly popular among foundations and government agencies that want to demonstrate the impact of their grantmaking. 

Results Accountability allows a funding organization to look at the population level result  they are working towards and align their funding strategies accordingly.  This framework also requires funded organizations (grantees) to demonstrate their individual contributions, enabling funders to roll up program data from multiple grantees when considering the overall impact of their portfolio of grants. 

Another positive aspect of the Results Accountability framework is that it acknowledges that one agency in itself can not be held accountable for achieving a population level result.  Instead, partnerships and collaborations must be formed among multiple organizations in order to achieve any sort of impact on the population level result.  However, this framework does require nonprofits to think about the effectiveness of their individual programs with a results oriented lens. 

What are the benefits of Results Accountability?  Aside from adding to the complexities of data collection and data management, this framework provides a "big picture" overview of how multiple funders, alliances, and nonprofits are making a difference in the world.  Grantees are responsible for answering the following questions:  What are we doing?  How well are we doing it?  What difference are we making?  These questions get at the heart of why many nonprofit organizations are in business. 

While this framework is valuable if applied correctly, it does require a realignment of grantmaking strategies.  For example, requests for proposals need to reflect core results concepts, including specific guidelines on performance measures.  Private funders and government agencies will also need to know what they are going to do with the data once they receive it and have appropriate data management systems in place. 

If you are interested in reading more about this framework, check out Mark Friedman’s book, Trying Hard is Not Good Enough.