The Guidestar Survey of Nonprofits released today reveals that non profits continue to struggle with declining donations and increased demand on services. With an emphasis on the first five months of this year the survey shows that while things are stabilizing somewhat, current conditions are being compared with some of the worst years ever. Competition for resources, pressure to restrict services, and the need to do more with less increases the importance of disciplined strategy management through tools such as Balanced Scorecard and Logic Models.

Last week, over 120 social and public sector leaders from across the world, including Russia, the UK, South Africa, Tunisia, and Finland convened in Washington, D.C., to discuss ways to more effectively manage their organizations' strategy.

It is hard not to get excited about the Mission-Driven Performance Summit that starts tomorrow in Washington, DC. Drs. Norton and Kaplan are great key notes when it comes to understanding and applying leading edge thinking around the topic of strategy management. There are clinics on Tuesday and then great case studes on Wednesday and Thursday. Over 100 people are registered to attend.

Ten years ago, the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) had low and declining student achievement, demoralized teachers, crumbling buildings, high turnover among superintendents (average tenure of two years) and disaffected parents pulling their children out of the system. More than 60 percent of the city's high school students missed at least two weeks of school per year, and the district had more than 700 teaching vacancies. The system was failing its students and stakeholders. Fast forward 10 years, and Atlanta has reversed its dismal numbers.

Pablo Eisenberg rightly points out the crisis facing charitable giving today in today's Wall Street Journal Report. He uses the better of a full page of print to outline his recommendations for how foundations and others can make a difference for nonprofits and their beneficiaries. While one can agree or disagree with the list – readers of this blog no doubt agree that to formalize strategy management, reporting and execution using a Balanced Scorecard would go a long way to addressing the challenges the author outlines.

Building a Balanced Scorecard is fun. We have been helping organizations determine what their strategy map, measures, and initiatives are for over 10 years. The process and the product are both enjoyable. Imagine spending time waxing on about your strategy and your objectives. Looking at your past performance and pondering the future opportunities. Your leadership team then gets together to debate the one-page view of your strategy, the strategy map, as Norton and Kaplan call it. This is fun stuff.

A few years ago, V. Kasturi Rangan from Harvard Business School argued that nonprofits need to have more than just a lofty mission to survive. In his article, entitled "Lofty Missions, Down-to-Earth Plans," he argued that nonprofits need a systematic method that connects their callings to their programs.

The Wall Street Journal weekend edition last weekend covered Eli Broad and his philanthropy. If you don't know, Mr. Broad is retired from for-profit jobs where he founded two Fortune 500 companies. He lives in Los Angeles and manages a foundation with $2.1 billion. As Ms. Riley, from the WSJ points, out, he is living by the Carnegie mantra of "Who dies with wealth, dies in shame."

On Tuesday of this week, I facilitated a 2.5 hour session called measuring and managing your strategy. I had a choice. I could teach to a case, and get participants from 30 organizations to all work on the same material, or I could ask them to build their own strategy map and measures. Now the challenge is that to effectively build a strategy map and measures typically takes 2-3 sessions of working with an organization's leadership team. Oh, did I mention that I also wanted to teach about using the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool, not just a measurement tool.

I get a regular email from HBS Working Knowledge, and today's email had a very interesting article in it. The article was called Trusth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor. Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee is doing research with Christina Fong to study whether people give more when they understand the plight of the person they are giving to. They try to answer the questions about how giving changes based on the context of the group being helped. Would you give more or less money to individuals who are poor because of circumstances they control (gambling or drug problems) or circumstances out of their control (children or economically devistated region). His research is interesting.