You wrote, “…we can in fact produce valuable, applicable and very practical findings.” I agree! Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, in my attempt to find a middle path here. But I was arguing in FAVOR of more attention to qualitative methods, so we can SHOW how “valuable, applicable, and practical” they are.

Qualitative measures are more useful and more rigorous than they are often given credit for, esp. these days amidst all the helpful discussion of the need for “better measures.” (Let me be clear: I say this discussion is helpful not because qualitative measures are bad and quantitative are “better,” but because I take “better” to apply to both qualitative and quantitative measures. Improving our measures of any sort is helpful. And what is more, this discussion of measures is helpful because it brings a lot of new, intelligent, well-meaning folks into the conversation about philanthropy.)

The problem is the lack of public explanation and discussion of good qualitative measures (like there is now with quantitative ones), which is why I argue that a better “public case” for them needs to be made. The problem is not with using qualitative methods or measures (I’ve used them primarily in my own work - and defended them - for many years.)

And of course I don’t think one type of method is better than another. My whole point - like yours - was that we need both.

There is and should be BOTH measures. One isn’t better than the other. Just different.

We need to recognize, first, that neither of these approaches is going to go away. Those who wish the latter would go away in favor of efficiency measures alone have a tough row to hoe if we consider what we know about why people say they give (e.g., because they were asked by friends, because of trust in the organization, because of a desire to give back, etc.).

So this leads, then, to the question of whether the two approaches can co-exist, and whether they can complement each other to the benefit of donors. The qualitative folks need to become comfortable with the numbers (they really have no choice in the nonprofit world today, frankly–and this is probably a good thing in the end, though there are growing pains!). And the metrics folks need to be comfortable with retaining some of those other forms of valuation (e.g., people recommending trusted nonprofits to each other, people giving because they are committed to a mission) that have been around, for good reason, for a long, long time. The key to this last point is for metrics folks to recognize that non-quantitative forms of evaluation CAN be systematic and rigorous in many cases.

Put another way, if more and better information is the key to more and better giving, we need to be open-minded about what counts as usable “information.” A thoughtful and persuasive statement of mission or a persuasive success story should have value alongside a cost-effectiveness calculation. And having all of these is ideal.

But when did it become a choice for the sector between most efficiently solving problems and nurturing the higher callings of our community? It seems to me that at its root philanthropy and the nonprofit sector can never be just one or the other. Every decision to give time or money has multiple layers: there is first a decision to give at all – a community impulse, a decision to give to a particular cause and theory of change – a “political” impulse, then a decision to give to a particular organization – an economic impulse.

In the seeking of the efficient market Sean describes, the desire to give back (which is at the root of all us this) and the disagreements about values (which include those expressed by how we measure outcomes and which we give weight to) will not disappear. This is, after all, a sector that includes both comprehensive sex education and abstinence-only sex education outfits. No assessment of effectiveness or efficiency of management will sway the most ardent proponents on either side that their organization should not exist and that their different visions of the ideal community are wrong. The disagreement is too deep.

Yet each side, I imagine, wants to see the creation and growth of the best organizations possible for advancing their values and realizing their vision. Efficient capital markets would seed innovative new approaches and support established successes on both sides of the divide in service of their vision. Philanthropic decisions are not ever going to be simple; I can’t imagine that the sector’s pluralism will go away even if its expression becomes more efficient.

This discussion seems to me to pit two histories of the independent sector against each other – the early 20th century philanthropy of Carnegie and Rockefeller and Ford against the 19th century of de Toqueville’s associations. We shouldn’t (nor do I think we can) do away with either legacy. Both are part of the nonprofit sector and both color it. The paradox is that they have contradictory aims. The first, the one which would benefit from an efficient market, see its own destruction as its ultimate end. The second, which rests on civic engagement, sees its own expansion as almost endlessly beneficial.

Ultimately, though, I believe we can only mitigate social ills by building community values. When we make this into an argument between the two, we do a disservice to the value of both historical legacies and we miss the sector’s unique opportunity to express the best of our democracy and the best of capitalism. You can’t rub the contradictions out; you just have to adapt to them.