Nonprofit Organizations and Results-based Community Governance

Many kinds of nonprofit organizations make important contributions to improving community governance and results. These include:

• Nonprofit service providers and investors (e.g., foundations, United Ways) have adopted a results-focus to their practices to assure that services are measured and managed to produce desired results for the people and communities served.
• Nonprofit civic organizations in the United States, and NGOs focused on building civil society in emerging democracies, have been engaging citizens in community planning, problem-solving, issue forums, and policy research so public policies, plans, and services are responsive to the needs of the community.
• Nonprofits that have been engaging citizens in measuring and reporting on community conditions that reflect citizens’ priority concerns for improving community well-being, or in compiling banks of data citizens can draw upon to advocate for community improvement. Toward these ends, a new role of "data intermediary" emerged in the 1990s of nonprofit organizations that help citizens find, analyze, and use community information.
• Some nonprofits play multiple roles, such as civic organizations and community operating foundations that conduct community-based research or help citizens obtain useful data. They may then go beyond their research or data intermediary role to support citizens in their advocacy using the data, or help citizens forge collaborations among organizations that can focus their resources on improving community well-being as measured by community indicators.

Nonprofit Organizations Put the Model in Action

Many of the practices by nonprofits, from managing their own services for results, to engaging citizens in problem solving, to helping citizens use data, are recognized as "advanced governance practices" in the Effective Community Governance Model.

• Go to the Overview of Effective Community Governance or read Chapter 1 of Results That Matter for more on the Effective Community Governance Model and the advanced governance practices.
• See The Model in Action for mini-case studies of nonprofits performing these practices to benefit their communities and the people they serve, including:
• The Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI) engaging citizens in policy study and advocacy.
• Boston-based Citizen Schools managing for results, with help from results-based investments by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.
• The Fund for the City of New York, the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council, and Des Moines Neighbors helping citizens digitally report neighborhood physical problems and hold public agencies accountable for repairs, with the help of investments from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
• Denver’s Piton Foundation supporting inner city residents in a Community Learning Network that uses data to improve low income neighborhoods, with the help of investments from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
• Jacksonville’s JCCI and Nevada’s Truckee Meadows Tomorrow engaging citizens in measuring and improving the quality of life in their regions, and in helping collaborating organizations such as a regional United Way use community indicators to improve the quality of life.
• A large scale collaboration of nonprofit, corporate, and pubic investors in nonprofit community development in the bi-state Kansas City metro area that focuses on results and resident engagement, as managed by the nonprofit Greater Kansas City Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
• These and other case studies of the advanced practices are provided in much greater depth in the book Results That Matter. See a full List of Examples and Case Studies in Results That Matter.