Last week, Net Impact hosted Aaron Hurst, Founder and CEO of the Taproot Foundation, for a casual fireside conversation (never mind the fact that we don't actually have a fireside) with Liz, in which Aaron shared his path to forming Taproot, insights he's gleaned while running the organization, and some interesting parallels to the work we do at Net Impact. With Liz and Aaron holding an informal Q&A in two comfy chairs in our office hub, the rest of the staff joined in on the conversation, allowing us to cover all sorts of topics in the spirit of knowledge sharing between individuals and organizations.

While our conversation spanned from the general public's perception of pro bono service to specific behavior change strategies employed by nonprofit organizations to how to balance a two-career family to authoring children's books,what I found most interesting was his insight into performance measurement. Maybe that's because it directly relates to my role at Net Impact, or perhaps it's because of my science/math background and love to quantify things, but Aaron was able to crystallize some concepts I had been reading and thinking about recently.

What sets successful nonprofits apart from others?

When asked, what qualities set successful nonprofits apart from others? Aaron immediately spoke to an organization's ability to use metrics as indicators of short-term performance. He talked about how organizations that had just a few metrics that they measured frequently to gauge performance were often more successful than those that had long-term goals they measured only a few times between inception and completion.

I thought this was rather insightful for a few reasons. First, it's important that an organization have the operational clarity to be able to choose only a few metrics - the most important - to gauge performance. This is quite difficult, since there are many metrics out there that are both interesting and important. But those organizations that can choose just a few measurements to gauge core performance demonstrate that they have a really well defined, articulated, and understood strategy.

Not just what you measure, but when you measure

Secondly, he spoke to choosing short-term metrics rather than long-term goals. So just as the math function known as the Riemann Integral gets more accurate as you increase the number of intervals you divide it by, so an organization becomes more effective by setting short-term milestones and measuring performance against those. These two concepts seem to jive well with an article from the Bridgespan Group which advocates, for very similar reasons, that organizations should consider creating a role that looks across the entire organization with the measurement lens.

As Net Impact looks to grow our network and influence, we're working to be even more thoughtful on how we measure our success. Mobilizing a generation to use their careers to drive transformational change in the world is a lofty and inspirational mission (as any good mission should be), but we're not going to get there next month, quarter, or year. We're going to have to be crystal clear on the milestones needed to reach this goal, and we're going to have to continue to develop the mechanisms and culture that allow us to reach - and measure - our ability to hit those milestones. Maybe that's why it was so reassuring to hear Aaron talk about these issues so candidly - because as we identify these milestones, and track our movement toward them, we can see the progress we're making in real time.