This is a tough question if you have never taken the time to put in ways to measure your activities and finances in the first place. In any business, non-profit or otherwise, growth and development should be at the centre of all your charitable efforts.

At the very least you should measure such things as money raised, the growth of memberships, the number of visitors as well as expenses and overheads. But this is just the start. Your board and supporters will want to have a firm understanding of your overall performance to match your mission statement to understand how to best serve you and your business in the long-term.

While economic measurements are necessary for NFPs, they are not the MOST important piece of information you can offer out. Think about your mission and how are you achieving this? Whatever it is, there should be some way to measure it to show that you are making some headway.

Your monitoring should take into account key performance indicators based on your organisation’s primary performance areas. These, of course, will be dependent on the type of charity you run.

On the administrative side of things, performances are easier to measure as they are more related to finance or sales. When it comes to accomplishments and effectiveness, the waters can get a little murkier.

Can you demonstrate volunteer support time or staff costs as an example? If so, these can then be balanced with the outputs related to your particular charity. Your output will vary again on your type of charity. How many events were arranged or how many products or services were dispersed as a result of your charity? And how did this change from last year if similar figures were captured? Was the change positive or negative as a whole. Does it seem like your charity was effective at meeting their mission?

Remember if your mission statement is a bit wishy washy, then you might want to replace it with something more concrete or easier to measure. Efficiency is a little easier to track with numbers, effectiveness not so much but you will get a general idea.

Don’t forget to make the measurements meaningful, otherwise, what is the point? And definitely, make sure that someone will use the figures to make positive change upwards and outwards. They must be able to be compared year on year and be cost effective to put together. And the simpler the better, but again this doesn’t always work out depending on the nature of the NFP. And don’t forget to build these into the administrative procedures for continual review and tracking purposes otherwise they can often be pushed aside for more seemingly important administrative tasks.

Once you get a grip on how well you are doing, you will soon find that measurable success can be a great motivator to your NFP and will help you push through those difficult or slow periods.