Quantitative Methodologies for Non-profit Organizations - Research Paper Example

Donors are interested whether their financial support is producing a certain good for a community or society. They want to know whether money is being used wisely or is being wasted. Impactor ongoing evaluations are done precisely to find out whether a program or project was worth funding or an ongoing program or project are producing results or long-term effects that would suggest that the program or project is worth supporting. According to Williams and Sankar (2008, forward section), “evaluation is an essential tool for making development programs successful.

” The function of an evaluation can also be as simple as assessing whether goals were achieved (Hickert et al., 2010). Managers, including managers of nonprofit organizations, are interested to find out whether the methods or strategies they have used are producing good results (Sherman and Misra, 2008). They also want to know how they can report best to funders or financiers whether the actions they have taken served well their target clientele or society at large. Managers want to evaluate their programs.

Were the funds spent well? Were the strategies that the organization or management adopted meeting the objectives or goals of a program or initiative? One of the key functions of management is to facilitate evaluations (Ayanda and Sani, 2011). Evaluation is essential to strategic management (Dess et al., 2010). Evaluation is also essential in finding out whether our initiative is producing outcomes worth supporting or funding (Khander et al., 2010). Just like the evaluation of Tulli et al. (2010), an evaluation can result in key recommendations important for the strategic positioning of a nonprofit organization.

Indeed the question of whether one’s work has been effective is a question often raised in evaluation research. The evaluation research can cover whether positive development impacts were created by a program or project.