Karl Hedstrom, NTEN

NTEN's Dashboard is a snapshot of our many different program areas and associated goals. By tracking specific data related to our Memberships, Events, Website, and a few other areas, we can use the Dashboard to see at a glance where we ARE, where we WERE, and where we SHOULD BE (and sometimes even where we're GOING).

If your organization hasn't spent much time developing a dashboard, let our experience be your guide.

Melissa Barber, Friends of Trees

Like most small nonprofits, Friends of Trees doesn't have the budget for elaborate bar-code systems or a chunk of staff time to track the success of its direct mail campaigns. Until about a year ago, we attributed all the contributions we received between the drop dates of two successive mailings to the first mailing in that series. It makes sense, and feels true -- until you start tracking the data.

Fortunately enough, you can even use your existing supplies and systems to track the success of your different direct mail campaigns.

Avinash Kaushik, Google

We focus too much on micro reporting on our websites, most of which is comprised of too much page level analysis. When you get to page analysis, you can easily get down and dirty and waste too much time.

The time is right to focus on metrics, Key Performance Indicators, and tips on how to measure the effectiveness of individual pages. Basically:

1. Don't Obsess About Your Home Page
2. Compute Your Cliff - Only Then Jump
3. Bouncy, Bouncy, Bounce - Its Good For You
4. Site Overlay - Something To Love
5. Think Holistically - Multiple Metrics, Key Context

Maren, German, and Kristie, Google Grants

On the Google Grants team, we receive a lot of questions from grantees on how best to evaluate their AdWords performance. We put this article together to give guidance around monitoring and evaluating your Google Grants account using a few strategies we find valuable. We hope you do, too!

Jeff Patrick, Common Knowledge

How did your last email fundraising appeal perform? Did your new email template work? Were your copy and creative on the mark? Did you raise as much revenue as you planned?

Email marketing is the foundation for most nonprofits' education, advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts online and the best practices for evaluating email marketing campaigns are well established. But nonprofits continue to underutilize ways to measure and evaluate the success of these campaigns.

It's not hard to take the first step to improving your email campaign performance through evaluation and optimization.

Ingvild Bjornvold, Social Solutions

The best nonprofits -- those passionate about changing lives for the better (and equally convinced of their ethical obligation to make absolutely certain they do no harm) -- use technology to analyze and manage their efforts, processes, and outcomes with the goal of continual improvement.

The emphasis on producing social value and placing clients' well-being first converges with high performing organizations' need to raise money effectively. A well-designed performance management system can help an organization become more effective at serving people and at raising money in an increasingly competitive market.

Alison Cherry & Joanna Miles, Beaconfire

When it comes to nonprofit fundraising, everyone wants to know "the best" way to do things, but deceptively simple questions keep coming up. And the answer is usually the one we all fear (and hate): "It depends." It depends on your mission. It depends on your audience, and the design of your site, and the goal of your campaign.

There's only one way to know for sure what's best: test it for yourself.

Four great panelists, three funny judges, and the incomparable Beth Kanter put on quite a show. Oh, and we tried to learn a few things along the way. Some of the issues our poets raised:

• Combining qualitative and quantitive data
• Proving ROI to your managers
• Using measurement as a learning tool
• Whether or not online mom communities are mean

I didn't get to capture all the great discussion, but I did get some great video of the poems, thanks to Jordan Viator. So if you missed it, here it is!

David M. Lawson and Jay Goulart, WOW! Institute

Have you ever reached your fundraising goal, but still found your organization cash-poor? Have you found yourself surprised when donors you thought for sure would come through again, didn't?

In uncertain times like we find ourselves in today, we often discover the impact of things like donor perceptions, satisfaction, and happiness. Long-term success depends in no small part on your ability to measure the intangible reasons that create customer loyalty.

If you are going to exceed your donors' expectations, you need to incorporate qualitative measurements that start to illuminate the intangible reasons you are succeeding, holding your own, or perhaps, failing.

Flickr Photo: Andrew_NWe had a staff meeting at NTEN a few weeks ago. In addition to seeing a bald eagle while kayaking, we brainstormed our ideas for 2009, and started translating those ideas into goals for the year. I've been chewing on those goals as we finalize our plans here. I have this unsettling feeling that the metrics we're setting for ourselves are adequate, but not outstanding. In short, I wonder if we're measuring what matters.

At the same time, I spent the last two days with some ridiculously smart, funny, and inquisitive folks talking about social media. These were sophisticated nonprofits, and as we discussed what social media might mean for their organizations, they zeroed in on one of the most interesting topics in the space: how do we measure this stuff? It seems that measuring what matters is in the water.