Evidence Can Restore and Transform the Nonprofit Sector

Among nonprofit leaders, the word “evidence” can conjure up images of endless charts and graphs in grant proposals or of some suit-wearing technocrat passing judgment on years of hard work in the trenches.

This reaction is understandable. Nonprofit leaders increasingly find themselves in a defensive crouch amid the daily scramble to deliver services to people in need while drumming up limited funding to keep the lights on. As a veteran of the nonprofit sector, I know this dilemma all too well. When I began my career 35 years ago in direct service work with food stamp recipients and community health center patients, I wondered whether I was really improving the lives of vulnerable populations and how my contribution fit. Today, as a leader of MDRC, a 50-year-old social policy research nonprofit organization devoted to improving anti-poverty programs, I partner with organizations working to answer—and act on—these questions for themselves.

But evidence also presents an opportunity for a wholesale, grassroots transformation from within the nonprofit sector. It doesn’t have to mean someone outside passing judgment on what we do, and it doesn’t have to be just about retrospectively assessing results. We can use our own readily available data to reach the populations that need us most, democratize access to the most effective program models, and enlist government and private sector funders in a movement to expand our impact in unprecedented ways.

This change I’m calling for is also a matter of equity: affirming that marginalized communities deserve the highest-quality services—backed by the same level of user-experience research, strategic planning, and continual improvement that for-profit companies invest in client and customer satisfaction.

Take enrollment. Many of MDRC’s nonprofit partners are using evidence to identify people who can benefit most from their services, not just those who are easiest to recruit. One such partner, whose mission is to train disadvantaged workers for high-wage IT jobs, was operating at capacity. Yet an analysis of its admissions data revealed that a high percentage of applicants were exiting the enrollment process before completing it. By combining its data analysis with something called a “customer journey map,” which illustrated barriers encountered during enrollment, the organization discovered that many of the people dropping off were actually those most likely to benefit from its services. With this insight, it was able to streamline its enrollment process, which not only made it easier for the highest-needs applicants, but also reduced the administrative burden on staff members.

Another way that evidence is empowering practice is in the adoption of proven program models. Witness the experience of STRIVE, another MDRC partner in workforce development. Since it was founded in 1984, STRIVE has been devoted to helping those living in poverty find jobs. Their approach had long taken the form of general preparation: working with program participants to craft résumés, practice for interviews, and shift their mindsets about employment. Then, about a decade ago, STRIVE resolved to bring its program in line with the latest evidence, which revealed the effectiveness of a “sectoral” strategy: preparing people for high-wage, high-demand jobs in specific sectors (such as healthcare and construction) with strong opportunities for advancement. After integrating this evidence-based approach with its existing program, STRIVE has seen its graduates’ employment and earnings improve dramatically and enjoyed an equally dramatic increase in support from funders and partners.

A lack of funding can make some nonprofit organizations hesitate to embrace the evidence-to-practice approach. Yet MDRC is finding that funders are eager to help organizations build the skills and infrastructure they need to take on this kind of work. And when they do, those organizations are better equipped to create and measure impact, which, in turn, attracts more support that can lead to still greater improvement—a virtuous circle.

This virtuous circle came to pass for one of our partners, Passages Connecting Fathers and Families, which helps low-income fathers stay connected to their children. By investing in innovative data science techniques to study and improve its enrollment strategies, Passages was able to increase its donor support, which included a sustained line of funding to test new curricula. MDRC is also seeing many smaller organizations, which often lack the resources to undertake such projects on their own, forming “communities of practice”: groups of like-minded organizations that not only exchange information about existing evidence but also pool resources to invest in new research.

Seen in isolation, such projects may seem unexceptional: chipping away at the edges of big social issues such as poverty and racism with chisels rather than sledgehammers. But I believe that at large and over time, these evidence-to-practice interventions can lead to bigger-picture change. When the evidence-based movement began about 50 years ago, the idea of using randomized controlled trials to validate the effectiveness of social programs—just as we do for new drugs—seemed novel, even radical. But over time, this approach has become integral to the field of social policy, fueling progress on problems ranging from low high school graduation rates to repeat imprisonment. In fact, it has become so universal that perhaps it has contributed to our defensiveness at the very idea of “evidence.” A similar shift toward actively putting evidence into practice across the nonprofit sector promises progress that may prove still more profound: not just more effective programs, but ones that can be sustained and brought to a large and broad scale.

John Martinez is Vice President of Evidence to Practice at MDRC.