|
[Printer Friendly Version]
The Mission-Resource Matrix
A Framework for Evaluating Civil Society Projects
By Michael C. Gilbert, March 14th, 2007
The field of for-profit business consulting has benefited enormously from Bruce Henderson's development of the Growth-Share Matrix at the Boston Consulting Group in the early Seventies. By mapping market growth rate against relative market share, he created an instant classic that spawned a vast field of useful analysis. But very little of this analysis has benefited civil society organizations or its funders, except for those specific situations where nonprofits are pursuing strict earned income enterprises. Civil society needs an analytical framework of its own.
I propose the following Mission-Resource Matrix as a simple framework for evaluating civil society projects. I will start here with a capsule description of the matrix, continue with an exploration of some its implications, and conclude with some questions and future directions.
Introducing the Mission-Resource Matrix
The purpose of any project or organization can be construed as bringing resources into a productive relationship with a mission. Whether it's about bringing activists to bear on a matter of public policy, bringing vaccines to an African village, or bringing artists into a live-work studio space, every civil society project is about making that connection.
In reality, every mission has a complex hierarchy of means and ends, and often resources can't be clearly quantified. Furthermore, genuine strategy emerges from systems thinking, not reductionism. But it's nevertheless useful to see our work in these terms for the purposes of evaluation.
The following illustration follows the classic two-by-two matrix model by mapping high-to-low Mission Related Impact against many-to-few Deployable Resources. As with all such matrices, the most desirable quadrant is the upper right one, the least desirable one is the lower left, and the remaining two are both intriguing.
In the simplest terms, each of the four quadrants of the Mission-Resource Matrix can be described as follows:
Low impact on mission and few deployable resources combine to create Pointless Effort. There are probably far more of these sorts of projects and organizations out there than we would be comfortable believing.
Many resources deployed toward a high impact on mission is where we all want our projects to be. There are many possible names for this quadrant, but for now we'll use the simple term Making a Difference.
Self-Sacrifice is what happens when we combine high impact on mission with very few resources. Even if such self-sacrifice is sustainable, this helps remind us that there are opportunity costs for not pursuing other projects that might bring more resources to bear.
Finally, when we pursue a great many resources toward a relatively modest impact on mission, we are engaged in a kind of Empire Building. No organization with substantial resources will fail to extoll their purported effectiveness, but we all know plenty of organizations who have chosen resources over mission.
Four Dynamics of the Mission-Resource Matrix
There are a great many ways in which to study the Mission-Resource Matrix and its implications. For purposes of illustration, here are four dynamics which may be familiar to you.
One of the most interesting dynamics of the matrix is the tension between Self-Sacrifice and Empire Building. Many people and many organizations will end up in one of those quadrants because they are avoiding the other one, but failing in either case to get to Making a Difference. Furthermore, within certain constraints, sometimes there really is only a choice between those two forms of failure. Under those circumstances, our strategic imperative is to step outside those constraints and reach for genuine effectiveness.
Another interesting dynamic is how successful Empire Building can divert resources from a project that is Making a Difference or at the very least squat on those resources in a variety of different ways. This can happen both within an organization with competing projects and between organizations that are themselves competing for resources.
Similarly, people who are sacrificing themselves can end up squatting on positions of leadership within a community or an issue, sometimes preventing the kind of new thinking that is needed to bring more scalable and sustainable projects to life.
Finally, as our fourth illustrative dynamic, people who are sacrificing themselves may experience resentment when a project comes along that is able to pull resources to the same issue area. They may be likely to see projects which are really Making a Difference as Empire Builders.
Seven Questions and Future Directions
This article is intended as a simple introduction to a concept with a great deal of potential. As a consequence, most of the interesting questions have been left for future exploration. Here are seven such questions:
- How does the matrix relate to the other tools and practices in the fields of organizational effectiveness, program evaluation, systems thinking, and strategic planning?
- How should resources and mission impact each be articulated and measured, in order to make the most of the matrix? In addition, how can multiplier effects and leverage be taken into account?
- Do the names used here for each of the four quadrants narrow our thinking too much? What would be some alternative names, even dry ones?
- What are the typical patterns of movement (between quadrants) of a project or organization through their typical life cycle and through typical momentous decisions?
- How does thinking at different levels of change (from tactical to strategic, from local to global, from social service to social change, and so forth) affect the concept of mission and the resources suited to it? Can the matrix help us sort out those tensions or is that best left in the realm of systems thinking?
- What are the most useful scenarios for application of this matrix? Could it be more useful as a rhetorical tool than as an analytical one? How might its simplicity be used to help volunteer decision makers avoid common traps?
- How can this tool be effectively used to compare large numbers of different projects and organizations? What sorts of patterns might emerge from such analysis?
What those of us in civil society want most of all (or at least, what we say we want) is to make a meaningful difference in the world. Whether you're making personal decisions about your life and work directions or you're a funder weighing hundreds of different projects or you're a leader of a large and ambitious organization, you still have to bring resources and mission together in order to make that difference. You can't afford to short change either mission or resources, but the path toward that perfect intersection is rarely obvious. With any luck, the Mission-Resource Matrix will shed a little more light on that path.
If you found this article interesting or helpful,
please consider making a donation to Nonprofit Online News.
It will probably feel good!
|