Okay, so now we have a new President, and the stock market is down about 9% this year already. This is after about a 35-40% drop last year. The market is a good proxy for the economy. Not only did the economy crash last year, but it is still not looking good this year, even with Hope and Change in the highest office of the country. The President yesterday said that is it is time to rebuild what America stands for and time to recommit to our values (more or less). What I heard, was that is it time for a new strategy. This also applies to your organization.

The Wall Street Journal's Carl Bailik wrote a good article in the December 19, 2008 paper about the value of rating charities. He says that most individual donors do not have the time to fully research all of their charitable donations. Most people spend much less time researching their donations than researching their stock picks (clearly, being in the WSJ, this is targeting a certain audience). But donors still want to make sure their contributions are going to good causes, and not just going to pay for overhead or fundraising expenses.

There has always been a big focus in the nonprofit community on helping improve public schools in America. Recently, I have seen a lot of information written about how foundations and others are helping schools use data to learn about what works and to drive results.

For years, management frameworks from the business sector have been foisted upon unsuspecting social sector organizations. Not surprisingly, many of them have proven wholly inappropriate for organizations that are not driven purely by financial motives. So why has the Balanced Scorecard been such a success in the social sector?

There are a lot of tools out there that can help you make something as murky as "strategy" a little more clear. But what should you choose? There's "theory of change." And "logic models." And if you are a regular reader of this blog, we've given you an earful about "strategy maps."

Earlier this year, I wrote about the NY Times Award for Nonprofit Excellence. Well, I would be remiss in not talking about the Washington Post Award for Nonprofit Excellence also. Both newspapers have teamed up with nonprofit education and advocacy organizations to manage the awards process.

Yesterday, Ascendant hosted a nonprofit and government networking breakfast that was focused on performance management. Over 80 people confirmed their attendance, and Dr. David Norton, creator of the Balanced Scorecard, gave a keynote address.

Kevin Star's article in the Fall 2008 Social Innovation Review outlines the test for scalability that is used by the Mulago Foundation. He aptly outlines four attributes that indicate when an idea can go big:

I first wrote about this topic in a blog post Is Consolidation the Answer - more thoughts. Since I made that post in June, some rather interesting comments have been posted on the Harvard discussion site.

Based on our successful breakfast in Boston, we are pleased to announce that we have begun inviting nonprofit and government leaders in the greater Washington area to attend an executive breakfast on managing performance with the Balanced Scorecard. Our keynote speaker is the Balanced Scorecard co-creator, David Norton. The breakfast will be on September 24, 2008.