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Challenge 15 in the series 50 Reasons Why It Is Hard to Run a Nonprofit
A quick note: Challenges 15 through 22 cover the Staffing and Motivation section of the 50 challenges from my book. Due to a publishing error on my end, these posts were drafted but never made it to the blog. I have no explanation for that glitch in the matrix but I am correcting it this week. If you've been following the series, you may notice the numbering jumps back — that's why.
Your after-school program served 400 kids last year. You know this because you counted them. You also know that 87% attended at least three days a week, that your staff-to-student ratio stayed below 1:12, and that you distributed 6,000 snacks.
What you don't know — what you may never know with certainty — is whether any of it made a difference.
Did those 400 kids do better in school? Stay out of trouble? Feel less alone? You believe so. Some of their parents told you so. But you can't prove it the way a business proves profit or a hospital proves a patient recovered.
That gap — between activity and impact, between what you count and what actually counts — is one of the most corrosive forces in nonprofit work. Not because it matters to funders (though it does). Because it matters to your staff.
A Candid survey of 355 nonprofit decision-makers found that 76% said measuring impact was a top priority — but only 29% felt they were "very effective" at demonstrating outcomes. That's not a failure of ambition. It's a reflection of how hard this actually is.
Most nonprofits work on problems where results take years to materialize and are influenced by dozens of factors beyond the organization's control. A workforce development program might place someone in a job — that's measurable. But did that person stay employed a year later? Did their children's lives improve? Those answers arrive slowly, if they arrive at all.
The result is that most organizations default to measuring what's easy to count: outputs. How many people served. How many meals delivered. How many workshops held. These numbers are real, but they don't answer the question your staff is actually asking, which is: are we making things better?
Researchers call this the gap between outputs and outcomes. In my book, I frame it as a risk — the risk that your team loses confidence in the mission because nobody can show them evidence that the mission is being accomplished.
Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile's research on workplace motivation found that a sense of progress is the single most powerful motivator in professional work — more powerful than recognition, incentives, or even interpersonal support. She called it "the progress principle."
Think about what that means for a nonprofit worker who can't see progress. Not because progress isn't happening, but because the organization doesn't have the tools or the framework to make it visible.
This is different from burnout. Burnout comes from too much work. The lack of clear progress comes from not knowing whether the work matters. A burned-out employee is exhausted. An employee who can't see progress is demoralized. The first problem is about volume. The second is about meaning.
Over time, this demoralization shows up as disengagement. Staff stop proposing new ideas. They go through the motions. They start job searching — not because they hate the work, but because they've lost faith that the work is working.
Here's what most nonprofits get wrong: they treat the measurement problem as all-or-nothing. Either we have a rigorous, longitudinal outcomes study, or we have nothing.
That's a false choice. You don't need a perfect measurement system. You need a progress system — a way of showing your team, regularly, that the work is moving in the right direction.
Start with what your staff already sees. The case manager who helped a client get housing knows that mattered. The tutor who watched a kid go from reading below grade level to reading at grade level has evidence. The problem isn't that progress doesn't exist — it's that nobody collects it, aggregates it, or feeds it back to the team in a structured way.
Create short-cycle feedback loops. Don't wait for the annual report to tell your team how things are going. Monthly or quarterly "wins and evidence" meetings — where staff share specific client outcomes, not just activity counts — can make the invisible visible. This isn't soft. It's management.
Distinguish between proof and signal. You may not be able to prove that your intervention caused a long-term outcome. But you can track leading indicators — early signals that suggest you're on the right track. Program completion rates. Client satisfaction scores. Follow-up contact rates. These aren't proof of impact. They're evidence of traction, and they're enough to sustain motivation.
Tell stories with data behind them. A single story of a client whose life changed is motivating. A single story backed by data showing they're one of 40 similar outcomes this quarter is convincing. Combine the specific with the aggregate.
If building this kind of progress system sounds like the work you wish someone would help you think through, that's a core part of what I cover in Nonprofit Good News Premium — practical tools for the strategic problems nobody else is writing about.
At your next staff meeting, ask each team member to share one specific outcome they've witnessed in the last 30 days — not an activity, an outcome. Something that changed for a real person. Write them all on a whiteboard or shared document. Then ask: how many of these are we tracking?
The answer will probably be "not enough." That's your starting point.
This is part of an ongoing series based on the 50 challenges outlined in Appendix 1 of Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience (Wiley, 2023). Each post names one challenge clearly and offers a practical reframe with steps you can take this week. For deeper coverage of nonprofit strategy, risk, and resilience — including tools you can put to work immediately — check out Nonprofit Good News Premium.