Over the course of the semester and with the many different aspects of this assignment my understanding of how it is that success is measured within the Patient and Family Support field of non-profits has appreciated greatly. It is through a combination of scholarly readings as well as substantial quantitative investigation that I have been able to create a foundation from which to better understand the performance evaluation and management that exists across this fairly diverse range of nonprofit organizations. It is this industries, like many others within the nonprofit field, inability to conform to traditional measures of ‘success’ and performance appraisal that has shown me just how these organizations have to rely on data that they receive from both qualitative and quantitative sources. Once this information has been collected they must attempt to interpret it as best they can in order to gauge an accurate understanding of their performance within the industry. As a result of this organizations operating within the Patient and Family Support sector often look to benchmarking and their theory of change in order to properly track their levels of success and effectiveness in the carrying out their logic model.

 The combining of qualitative and quantitative information can be an incredibly complex process and at times if done incorrectly or if only one type of data is collected then organizations risk cutting corners and missing out on otherwise crucial information. This may result in companies having misguided ideas about their performance and where their organization needs to be focusing their time and resources.

 As, over the course of this assignment, more research was done it has become clear that – due to the incredibly diverse nature of the nonprofit field – for many of these organizations their measures of tracking success within their logical models are unique. This need to tailor firm’s measures of success (unless the organizations are providing the same or similar services) produce a confusing image of the organizations as a collective field at times.

 Once I was able to identify this need for the customization in company’s measures, through thorough investigation of different organizations, something interesting became clear. It was in each of these organizations that, other than some similar quantitative measures (such as funding raised) which often were used for benchmarking between businesses, their measures of success were greatly affected by the goals that the firms had placed at the forefront of their organization. This may seem somewhat obvious but in the minds of many people the goals of businesses are something that are immediately associated with profit, market capital, fund raising abilities and so on. In this field however, that many of these organizations’ goals are not this simple. It has been through investigating these organizations that I have been able to see the importance of their vision and mission statements and how it is that these statements, published by the organization, have a commanding effect on much of the companies measures of success.

 We are able to see the specialization of goals that some of these organizations undertake by looking more closely at the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which has been the reoccurring case used during my investigation. The overarching vision of the Make-a-Wish Foundation is “To grant a wish to every eligible child.” (Make-A-Wish, 2019) In America the organization estimates that 27,000 children are diagnosed with a qualifying condition each year. Since the organization’s opening and granting of its first wish in 1980 they have been able to grant over 350,000 wishes to children in the US and have increased the amount of wishes that they grant annually to just over 15,600. (Make-A-Wish, 2019) With a significant gap still existing between the number of children that do qualify for a wish and the number of wishes granted each year the foundation is still pushing to increase the number of wishes they are able to fulfill. This overarching goal of the organization drives many of the other operational and financial goals of the foundation that they sent regarding fundraising, budgeting and so on.

In addition to this in the Make-a-Wish Foundations mission statement they outline how they aim to “create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.” (Make-A-Wish, 2019) From this major aim of the company we see the Make-a-Wish foundations smaller goals arise which address quality control in the delivering of services to children and their families.

In terms of benchmarking those measures of success that are more quantitative in nature one organization that rivals the Make-a-Wish Foundation and that has also been thoroughly investigated over the course of this assignment has been ‘Dream Factory.’ Dream Factory is however slightly different from the Make-a-Wish Foundation in that it provides wishes not only to those children that are terminally ill but also that have higher survival chances. In essence this means that the Dream Factory has looser regulations on who it is that is eligible to make a wish. This impacts the data slightly between the two organizations but also provides a very suitable ‘competitor’ for which we can compare the Make-a-Wish Foundation throughout the rest of this assignment.

It has been through identifying the importance of the vision and mission statements of these organizations that has helped to appreciate my understanding of what it is that dictates success and measures of performance within many companies participating in Patient and Family Support field. Simplifying this idea further the importance of the theory of change amongst these organizations is of particular significance as the working backwards from these large overarching goals allows these businesses to make specific mid and short-term objectives.

Furthermore, it has been this recognition of these overarching goals and the role that they play in these organizations that I have been able to better understand the role of more traditional measures of success within these non-profits as they create a ‘pathway of change’. (How Does Theory of Change Work?, 2013) This pathway (sets of smaller goals), for many organizations, proves to be a useful method for tracking progress towards these larger organizational goals.

References:

How Does Theory of Change Work? (2013, May 12). Retrieved December 08, 2020, from https://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change/how-does-theory-of-change-work/

Make-A-Wish. (2019). About Make-a-Wish.