Measuring the performance of voluntary organisations

The social, economic and political importance of voluntary (non-profit) organisations across the world has never really been in doubt, although it may have taken the formal mapping of their scope and scale to drive home the message (Salamon et al., 1998). It is clear that the governments of many countries rely heavily on indigenous and/or international voluntary organisations to resource or deliver basic goods and services. Indeed, often large (and, in many fields, growing) amounts of public money are routed through the sector, either directly or indirectly. These resource transfers might be made through grants, contracts for specific services, tax exemptions, secondments of staff, free places on training courses, or in other ways. They may come from any number of tiers of domestic governments, as well as through transnational bodies such as the European Union and the United Nations.

<p><p><p>Growing attention is consequently being focussed on the performance of voluntary organisations. Numerous forces have<p><p>combined to increase the pressures of demand for such data. In fact, few voluntary organisations are strangers to outcome or performance assessment of one kind or another: their very existence often requires them to argue their effectiveness in tackling social problems, supporting vulnerable individuals or promoting particular causes.