The Social Profit Handbook - 9781603586047

How to Articulate and Assess What Success Looks Like

For-profit institutions measure their success primarily by monetary gains. But nonprofit institutions are different; they aim for social profit.

But how do you measure the success of a social profit institution, where missions are focused on the well-being of people, place, and planet? It is one of the most difficult tasks faced by nonprofit administrations, who find themselves confused, even paralyzed, by the current demand for “outcomes measurement,” a phrase used by most foundations and funding agencies, and increasingly by individual donors.

The Social Profit Handbook gives those who lead, govern, and support social profit organizations both a different way to think about assessment and a very practical approach to implementing formative assessment practices—practices whose purpose is not about judging work that has already happened, but rather about improving work that will happen in the future.

Readers looking to improve planning and outcomes will find new insights and strategies—from backward planning to applied rubrics. These tools, along with a host of case studies from around the nation, makeThe Social Profit Handbook a unique organizational development tool—for a wide range of social profit organizations, as well as social venture businesses, from low-profit corporations to B Corps.

Drawing upon decades of leadership in the foundation and nonprofit worlds, David Grant clarifies and emboldens the pursuit of social profit in multiple forms. The result: more benefits to society, more social profit,and stronger, more effective social profit organizations.