Data-related challenges in human services cannot be solved with technology tools alone; substantive consensus-building is necessary as well. Specifically, disparate providers with the same goals within fields of practice need to align around standard definitions of common terms. With a standardized taxonomy, it’s possible to take full advantage of technology to automate some data exchange and aggregate information sector-wide.
A number of benefits can result from the decision by practitioners to adopt a standard taxonomy of key performance measures:
Individual nonprofits can: benchmark themselves against other peer organizations to identify and adopt the best practices of top performers; produce reports for multiple funding sources without duplicating effort; continue to innovate with unique performance goals while assessing their connection to standard measures.
Government policy-makers can: collect information that in aggregate allows them to track human service trends in close to real-time; better respond to the needs of citizens; make better judgments about the productive allocation of taxpayer dollars.
Funders can: make relative comparisons of organizations based on truly equivalent information; better understand common challenges of nonprofit agencies and develop realistic expectations about performance targets; aggregate results across multiple grantees.
Researchers, advocates, and the general public can: better understand the nonprofit sector; develop insights about nonprofit performance and effectiveness; tell a more powerful story about the impact of human service providers.
Data-related challenges in human services cannot be solved with technology tools alone; substantive consensus-building is necessary as well. Specifically, disparate providers with the same goals within fields of practice need to align around standard definitions of common terms. With a standardized taxonomy, it’s possible to take full advantage of technology to automate some data exchange and aggregate information sector-wide.
A number of benefits can result from the decision by practitioners to adopt a standard taxonomy of key performance measures: