Purposeful Measurement and Evaluation

One of RevJen’s core themes is that work of purpose should be done with purpose, on purpose. This focus on being deliberate and intentional is woven throughout RevJen program offerings.

• In our Fuel Series Workshops, we guide leadership teams as they invest time and energy to intentionally build the revenue capacity of their organizations.
• In our R-Squared Peer Groups, leaders deliberately invest time, energy, and money to grow together using a defined and facilitated process.

So, when it comes to undertaking initiatives within RevJen, we take a page from our own playbook and tackle them with the same sense of purpose that we champion.

We are convinced that our sector’s most important resource is the people doing the work, and that we must invest in them to lead the organizations and advance the work and missions for the people THEY serve.  For some time, we have been working to expand the measurement and evaluation of our work to ensure this message remains front and center. Now, we are taking the next steps … and we want you to come along with us.

Enter Project Evident

Just as so many of you have trusted RevJen to guide you, we’re partnering with the team at Project Evident to guide us as we expand the scope of our impact at RevJen.  We are in the early stages of our partnership, but we have developed a vision for this work that I am excited to share:

By the end of 2023, RevJen’s dedicated and well-resourced measurement and evaluation function will utilize its capacity to understand and quickly adapt to nonprofit market needs by continuously assessing and quantifying the impact of our models in order to demonstrate the return on investment of our program offerings for participants, the organizations they lead, the funders that invest, and the sector in which they operate. 

We are hopeful that our investment in this work will allow us to grow the ways we can elevate the collective voices of leaders in the sector and change the way they connect – with each other and with the funding community. Together with our growing RevJen community of leaders, we will be able to get real-time data on what nonprofits are facing, allowing us to make quick adjustments to meet immediate needs and to communicate them to the funding community.

The Timing Couldn’t be Better

I am sensing a shift in the philanthropic community toward increased confidence in nonprofit leaders and fewer restrictions. Just this month, Melinda French Gates updated her giving pledge with this statement, “philanthropy is most effective when it prioritizes flexibility over ideology.”  That flexibility signals trust in the people on the ground to come up with their own solutions and definitions of success. This trend reaffirms my belief that now is the time for us to approach our work – revenue, operations, and program – with intention.

After all, work with this much purpose should be done on purpose.