Resources on Nonprofit Evaluation & Impact Measurement

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The resources below offer practical guidance, tools, templates, and examples to help smaller nonprofits develop an approach to evaluation and impact measurement that fits their goals, capacity, and resources.

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Getting Started with Evaluation & Impact Measurement

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• Starting Small: How to Build a Nonprofit Evaluation Practice, TSNE, October 25, 2023. (Web resource)

  A guide to assembling a team, engaging stakeholders, developing a logic model, identifying evaluation questions, and selecting metrics. Links to resources on evaluation, logic models, data collection, and equity.
   

• IDinsight Impact Measurement Guide, IDinsight. (Web resource & video)

  Developed for smaller organizations, this guide includes a step-by-step evidence journey, theory-of-change tools, indicator selection, surveys, and DIY approaches.
   

• A Practical Guide to Nonprofit Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning, Bridgespan, 2025. (Web resource)

  A guide to identifying key outcomes that matter most, collecting quantitative and qualitative data, and using what you learn to improve. Includes additional resource links.
   

• The Step-by-Step Guide to Evaluation: How to Become Savvy Evaluation Consumers, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2017. (PDF)

  A practical, nontechnical introduction to evaluation designed for nonprofit leaders and staff, covering how to approach evaluation, choose methodologies, engage communities, incorporate racial equity, and share findings.
   

• Evaluation is Not a Bad Word, Nonprofit Net of Greater Boston, November 18, 2025. (Video)

  In this pre-recorded seminar, Luba Falk Feigenberg discusses ways to make evaluation a routine part of advancing equity and impact in an organization. Includes transcript and overview article. (50 minutes)

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Evaluation Toolkits & Playbooks

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• Measure4Change Performance Management Playbook, Urban Institute. (Web resource)

  This playbook covers building a measurement culture, collecting and managing data, analyzing results, communicating findings, and incorporating racial equity.
   

• Monitoring & Evaluation Toolkit, Change the Game Academy. (Web resource)

  A four-step process for community-based organizations and small NGOs to clarify aims, identify needed information, choose data-collection methods, and analyze/share findings. Includes templates for Theory of Change, Logical Framework, and SMART indicator, and “Tiny Tools to Measure Change.”
   

• Measuring What Matters Tool, Center for Community Health and Evaluation, January 2022. (PDF)

  A toolkit including checklists and templates for stakeholder engagement, logic models, evaluation plans, data collection, focus groups, interviews, observation, surveys, analysis, and communicating findings. Developed around community health, much of the methodology is applicable to other nonprofit programs.
   

Evaluation Resource Hubs 
 

• Evaluation & Planning Resources, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. (Web resource)

  A collection of resources for nonprofits interested in strengthening evaluation, including materials on program evaluation, evaluation planning, and performance management.
   

• BetterEvaluation Resource Library, BetterEvaluation. (Online resource library)

  A searchable hub with hundreds of resources related to managing, conducting, using, and strengthening capacity for evaluation. Use its Rainbow Framework to find resources related to a specific evaluation approach or task.
   

What to Measure / Outcome Frameworks
 

• Outcome Indicators Project, Urban Institute (Web resource with PDFs, Word and Excel documents)

  Struggling with what to measure? This resource provides outcome frameworks and candidate indicators for numerous program areas, including youth mentoring, tutoring, transitional housing, performing arts, health-risk reduction, and prisoner re-entry. It also includes data-collection strategies and suggested data sources.
   

Data Collection and Data Ethics
 

• Data Ethics Guidebook and Toolkit, Packard Foundation, 2022. (PDFs)
  A guidebook and toolkit with planning tools and go-to resources for evaluators, foundation staff, and other people who work in evaluation.
   

• Data Playbook, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, October 31, 2016.  (PDF)
  This playbook provides a framework for how organizations can not only capture data more effectively but put it to work underscoring their mission.

 

Evaluation & Racial Equity
 

• How Can We Do Evaluations in Service of Racial Equity: A Tool Kit for Practitioners, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Jan 01, 2024 (PDF or web)
  This tool kit includes blogs, tip sheets, presentations and other content to help evaluators implement evaluations for racial equity. 

 

Communicating Your Impact
 

• Expanding Audience & Impact: Nonprofits Communicating Data to External Audiences, Urban Institute, July 14, 2015. (PDF)
  The brief provides example strategies to effectively communicate program data with external stakeholders such as policymakers, funders, and clients.
   

• Equitable Communications Guide, Innovation Network, October 6, 2023. (PDF)
  This ”Roadmap for Evaluators in the Social Sector” explores how to communicate equitably, center the experiences of others, and convey the meaning behind your message.
   

• Story+Data Map / The Workbook, Data+Soul Research, 2025. (PDF)
  This tool supports program and evaluation design, clarifying the goals and intended outcomes of an initiative by placing the people directly impacted at the center of the story.