Problems and Solutions in Measuring Performance of Nonprofit Organizations
Author: Way Sun
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Contemporary nonprofit organizations often replicate public and private sectorperformance management styles in an attempt to outdo competition. Performancemeasurement is the main task within performance management. This thesis aims toexplore potential problems that may occur when nonprofit organizations carry outperformance measurement and propose solutions that can effectively improve theapplication of performance measurement to nonprofit organizations. Recent relevantarticles and journals from domestic and international sources have been used asreferences in order to identify various performance measurement approaches. Amulti-dimensional model of comprehensive performance measurement has alsobeen introduced. Based on this model, and through the analysis of three practicalcases in America and Taiwan, five questions will be explored, including causes andconsequences, overlapping objectives, negative impact, measurement techniquesand institutional constraints that might result from the adoption of performancemeasurement in nonprofit organizations. Because of the unique organization andmanagement of nonprofit organizations, this thesis suggests that performancemeasurement should focus on five solutions: the level of achieving missions, theutilization of different types of performance measurement mechanisms, commondecisions about the dimension and criteria for performance measurement made by allrelevant parties, measurement made from multi prospects and the primary functionof focusing on increasing the adaptability of the organizations. Last but not the least,the thesis emphasizes the significance of performance measurement in nonprofitmanagement and the position and recognition of researchers and practitioners inperformance measurement.