Measuring for Non-Profits

     In Katie Delahaye Paine’s book, “Measure What Matters,” it gives many tools for how to evaluate your organization’s public relations and online presence. Chapter 13 is dedicated to specifying how these tools are applicable to non-profit organizations. I find this chapter especially helpful for me because arts administration is mostly about non-profits. Chances are, if you’re working in arts management, you’ll be managing a non-profit and it is definitely different from managing a for-profit business. I have taken a whole class for my arts administration minor specifically about non-profit management. Through that class and all my other arts administration classes one of the biggest things I’ve learned is the importance of maintaining a positive, interactive relationship with your audience. Non-profits truly rely on their audience to stay up and running; their audience is also their donors, their main source of support. They have to constantly be making sure their audience is happy and staying engaged with their services. Yes, this is something every business must do, but the arts, though I believe are essential in everyone’s lives and in society, is not a daily need like food or hygiene products. People will always need to buy those things, but people (though again I believe it is a need) choose to go to the theatre, a museum, or a concert; so the relationship for a non-profit and their audience is just a bit higher stakes. 

     

Measuring the effectiveness of a non-profit’s online presence and online relationship to their audience is therefore pivotal to their success, and there are bound to be some key ideas, tools, or differences from for-profit businesses. This chapter in “Measure What Matters” talks about how relationships take on greater importance in the non-profit world and how measurement is even more important. Though the perception might be only big non-profits can afford to make a budget for evaluating and measuring, it assures the reader this is not the case, and encourages non-profits to measure their success to keep the strong organization-audience relationship.