Over the past two decades, researchers have made progress measuring the size, scope, and dimensions of the nonprofit sector. These efforts have resulted in the development of a national classification system (e.g., the National Taxonomy for Exempt Entities), measures of sectoral inputs (e.g., staff, volunteers, financial resources), and indicators of organizational outputs (e.g., program activities, persons served, units of service delivered). The information provides key insights and the background needed to develop a statistical portrait of the nonprofit sector, nationally and internationally (Hodgkinson & Weitzman, 1996; Salamon & Anheier, 1996). More recently, however, there is new interest in measuring the benefits of the sector and the overall impact that nonprofit organizations have on society over time. This effort is demanding and complex, but necessary, as the sector and its institutions will be called upon to demonstrate their accomplishments and inherent worth in an era of greater accountability to the public.

To date, the nonprofit sector has relied on anecdotal evidence and general good will to argue for its many successes and tax-exempt status. There is no body of scholarly literature assessing the roles, functions, and contributions of the nonprofit sector beyond evaluation research at the institutional level. Hence, in public deliberations, nonprofit professionals are unable to clearly articulate the myriad activities performed by 501(c)(3) organizations and any ensuing, greater societal good. While both government and business have clear and consistent bottom lines (i.e., elections and profits, respectively), the bottom line for nonprofits is vague (i.e., the production of collective goods that would not otherwise be provided in society). Until we develop a useful methodology to describe and measure the sector, we are reduced to operating on beliefs about the value added by nonprofit organizations as well as their contemporary roles and functions.

Many pitfalls prevent an accurate assessment of the impacts that nonprofit organizations and the sector as a whole have on society. Nevertheless, we are persuasively coaxed down this research path by the guest authors of this volume. Eighteen scholars collectively explore research approaches, methodologies, conceptual frameworks, and fundamental issues associated with measuring the effectiveness of the sector and its impact on community and society. At the heart of the exercise is a desire to gain a deeper understanding of the uniqueness of nonprofit organizations in improving the quality of life in communities and the roles nonprofits play in preserving and strengthening citizen participation in democratic societies.

THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF MEASURING IMPACT

The primary purpose of this 16 chapter volume is to explore the potential to develop precise empirical tools to measure the impact of the charitable nonprofit sector, or specific subsectors, on society. In the increasingly competitive world in which nonprofits operate, there are new demands for impact analysis. Foundations want to know whether the programs they fund are making a difference. Private donors inquire as to how donations serve targeted audiences. Board members ask for detailed information on organizational activities and performance.

Attention to measurement has also become more important among government agencies with the increased privatization of social welfare and the devolution of federal government decision-making powers to the states. Following the passage of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, and the Balanced Budget Act of 1996, organizations receiving government funds are required to conduct internal performance evaluations. Over the past decade, performance contracting quickly became the way local and state governments sought service delivery. This has led to new levels of both competition and collaboration among the three sectors—government, business and nonprofits—depending upon the approach of government (Egan, Cross, & Mayer, 1999; Weisbrod, 1997).

Existing measures provide a valuable statistical profile of the size of the nonprofit sector relative to government and commercial sectors. The nonprofit sector represented nearly 7 percent of national income in the United States in 1996, up from 5.5 percent in 1977. The sector also accounted for an estimated 7 percent of total paid employment, up from 5.3 percent in 1977. When volunteer time is included (109 million Americans, representing the equivalent of 9 million full-time employees), the charitable nonprofit sector represents approximately 13 percent of total employment in the United States.

Such measures offer much better idea of inputs to the sector rather than specific outcomes achieved in the long-term. To be explored more fully is the other side of the accountability ledger, capturing the benefits that the sector produces to improve the quality of life in communities. As discussed in the following chapters, some outputs are available in their simplest forms, such as the number of hospital beds filled or the number of students enrolled. There is little evidence, however, that organizations can reliably measure organizational performance at the institutional level, much less at the community and/or sectoral levels at a time when sophisticated assessment methodologies are in demand.

Increased demand for rigorous measurement tools is not limited to nonprofits in the United States. With the growth of foundation-sponsored foreign aid and the popular belief that nonprofit organizations are important vehicles to develop democracy and to offset poverty, efforts are being made to measure the impact of nonprofit organizations abroad. But the data systems and empirical tools to assess socio-economic development and democracy formation are primitive compared to those available for assessing business activities (Edwards & Hulme, 1996; World Bank, 1998).

Moreover, as the authors in this volume point out, the current focus on measuring service delivery of nonprofit organizations sometimes distracts from the other key roles and functions of the sector such as providing avenues for affiliation; bringing about social change, advocacy, research, and experimentation; empowering citizens; engaging in arts and culture; and promoting and strengthening democracy and religious participation. The fall of Communism has generated an interest in the power of the third sector to offset the power of government and to empower citizen action in Eastern Europe and other developing nations. The term civil society, selected by Eastern European scholars to name this third sector of organizations and associations between government and business, has led to an explosive amount of research worldwide. Civil society and civic renewal have also become important topics in the United States with an incredible outpouring of research and scholarly disagreement, as well as citizen organization and action around such issues as quality of life and livable communities (Dionne, 1998; Ehrenberg, 1999; Fullinwider, 1999; O’Connell, 1999; Skocpol & Fiorina, 1999).

Ultimately, the configuration of various types of nonprofit institutions, governance, services, and citizen participation leads to outcomes that can be expressed as the benefits or changes brought about in people, societies, and/or the environment. Progress is being made toward quantifying these changes, using systemic benchmark indicators over the past decades as noted by Kenneth Land (Chapter 4) and most recently with the publication of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators: A New Tool For Assessing National Trends (Henderson, Lickerman, & Flynn, 2000). But the publication of this new volume starkly reveals (1) that social science methodology has not advanced to the point of identifying contributions to quality of life indicators by type of institution and (2) the lack of reliable data series that measure citizen contributions to society. The authors reveal that measuring institutional contributions poses major methodological difficulties and that basic information needs to be collected over long periods of time in order to test various theories about institutional or sectoral behavior.

To honestly measure the degree to which organizations with Section 501(c)(3) status are contributing to the betterment of society and, hence, earning tax-free status is a daunting task. We are persuasively coaxed down this path by our guest authors, one of whom, Paul DiMaggio (Chapter 16) states that "the potential of impact analysis for enhancing the reflexivity of the nonprofit sector, encouraging dialogue between researchers and practitioners, and creating more sophisticated ways of thinking about the sector and its goals strikes me as making the quest worthwhile." David Mathews (Chapter 9) warns that "getting the results that we want in the affairs of our communities may not be reducible to simply promulgation standards and measuring results; it may require a process of judging results publicly." In other words, mechanisms need to be developed for citizens to directly examine outcomes of their decisions to determine whether or not these were the desired outcomes. Otherwise, as Burt Weisbrod (Chapter 17) reminds us, "The danger is that easily measured outputs or outcomes will be measured while others remain unmeasured and, in effect, valued at zero. Resources will then be misallocated, too few going into the provision of such subtle outputs as tender loving care in a nursing home, appreciation of art and music, [and] education in cultural values."

LINE OF INQUIRY

The line of inquiry pursued in this volume presumes that the sector is ready and willing to engage in a social and economic accountability study and to make transparent the nature of nonprofit organizations, an honest and self-reflective exercise for those who work in the sector. There are several inherent difficulties in conducting performance studies. For some social scientists, the methodological blocks are the most challenging because there is no clear path in the extant literature on how to measure organizational outcomes or impacts. For others, steeped in the tradition of evaluation research, the lack of a comparison group (or counterfactual) against which progress can be assessed makes the research exercise uninteresting. Still others hesitate for lack of a conceptual or theoretical framework to approach the exercise.

Political dilemmas related to accountability measures must also be considered when attempting such a statistical effort. Empirical measures created to describe the sector will be used by a variety of audiences to applaud or to critique the sector. For example, heated debates between the Reagan Administration and environmental groups in the early 1980s resulted in the near abolition of certain programs within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Environmentalists argued that without EPA data and needs assessments, the public would be deprived of salient information on the condition of the environment. The Administration argued that there were other priorities for the national budget. Recognizing that people measure what is important to them, any and all statistical measures can quickly become politicized.

These challenges not withstanding, we believe that the accumulated knowledge of practitioners and researchers provides a viable foundation on which to begin the process of measurement. We acknowledge that the process will be a crude beginning that necessitates the development of a lexicon for discussing what constitutes a "contribution," a "success," or an "outcome" in each of the subsectors. We also recognize that our initial efforts will require the use of systems analysis if the aim is to move beyond measuring immediate, linear achievements to truly delve into more fundamental, long-term effects.

This volume explores various approaches to measurement ranging from concrete empirical techniques to abstract conceptual arguments on the value of measurement to foster democracy. The insights shed light on various types of measurement that an organization may want to employ, such as downward performance measures (i.e., to customers), upward performance measures (i.e., to bosses, boards and funders), functional accountability measures (i.e., at the individual project level), and strategic accountability measures (i.e., for wider programmatic goals). The authors examine the potential to measure political objectives in a society devoted to promoting democratic institutions, women’s rights, and equal access to services. The methodologies allow for both instrumental rationality (i.e., "bean counting") as well as a more systemic approach (i.e., the unbundling of information). The depth of perception of the authors allows the creative reader to gain insights into the subtlest facets of measurement, such as the tender loving care provided to people, animals, and the earth during times of need, an often unspoken value of private charities.

The volume is also unique in that the papers pertain both to the sector as a whole and to specific subsectors therein, such as religious congregations, arts organizations, and human service agencies. The ideas are conveyed through the disciplinary lenses of political science, economics, humanities, sociology, geography, and journalism. Some authors are extremely pessimistic and others quite optimistic about the potential outcomes of such an exercise. We purposefully cast a wide net to expand our collective horizons on the subject.

COMMON TERMINOLOGY

We learned quickly the importance of developing a common terminology. What we thought would be simple reference terms were actually points of departure. For example, the term "function" has distinct meanings for sociologists and economists. Hence, we begin by carefully defining our terms. Like many other social scientists in the human services subsector, we adopted a set of definitions developed by the United Way of America to differentiate inputs, outputs, and outcomes (Greenway, this volume, Chapter 14; Hatry, 1999). Inputs include resources dedicated to or consumed by the program (e.g., money, staff and volunteer time, facilities, equipment, supplies). Outputs are direct products of program activities, usually measured in terms of the volume of work accomplished (e.g., number of classes or counseling sessions, educational materials, participants served, performances). Outputs have little inherent value in themselves, but are expected to lead to a desired benefit, outcome, and/or change for a target audience. Outcomes, on the other hand, are the benefits or changes (for individuals, populations, the earth, society) derived from the program, activity, inputs, and/or outputs (e.g., Are participants better off after receiving the service? Is the river cleaner as a result of reduced production by Company X upstream?). Outcomes may relate to behavior, skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, condition, status, or other attributes.

Impacts are inherently more difficult to measure because we must first understand the causal relationships between the measured inputs, outputs, and outcomes and the underlying phenomena leading to the observed results. Impact analysis helps us understand "why" a phenomenon occurred and apportion credit or blame for any change(s). Outcomes, in contrast, tell us "what" has occurred. In order to measure the impact of something, we are required to formulate a theory of behavior (e.g., an hypothesis) and a testable model (e.g., if A then B), to collect reliable data, and to execute formal analysis. One of the outcomes of this special volume on measurement is our conclusion that the nonprofit sector is many years away from being able to measure its impact on society. First, we must make strides toward better measurement of the sector’s outputs and outcomes from which a cohesive theory of behavior might emerge.

ORGANIZATION OF THE VOLUME

The authored chapters are presented in four parts to reflect the major themes that emerged from the conference that launched this inquiry and subsequent research. Part II is devoted to exploring how we might think about measuring the contributions of nonprofits from a practical or operational perspective. Clifford Cobb (Chapter 2) presents a conceptual model that can be used to assess the degree to which economic and social indicators are value neutral (i.e., mathematically elegant or conforming to a predetermined methodology) or value explicit (i.e., crude estimates of relevant features of our experience). He argues that our society has opted to establish a system of measurement that allows us to deny warning signs of failure and perpetuates dysfunctional and unjust systems. The charge is to develop instrumental, quality measures of success and failure in society that point beyond themselves and truthfully communicate our cultural identity.

Melissa Stone and Susan Cutcher-Gershenfeld (Chapter 3) discuss how mission vagueness, the blurring of lines between for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and loose coupling between donors and beneficiaries compound the problems associated with assessing organizational effectiveness. Measurement is complicated by the fact that we have not reached consensus on causal models that clarify the links between means and ends. The authors present three conceptual models commonly used by academics to assess organizational effectiveness (i.e., natural systems model, goal model, and decision-process model), which further illuminate the lack of consensus on how to think about effectiveness, much less how to proceed with the empirical exercise. Stone and Cutcher-Gershenfeld present an array of examples on how nonprofit practitioners are making headway to measure effectiveness in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

Kenneth Land (Chapter 4) embeds the exercise of measuring the impact of the nonprofit sector into the historical and contemporary literature on social indicators. He provides rich evidence of both the limitations of such measures and their potential to help illuminate the performance of nonprofit organizations. The paper gives specific meaning to and helpful examples of core terms of measurement. For example, Land differentiates between objective indicators that represent social facts independent of personal evaluations and subjective indicators that measure individuals’ experiences and evaluations. He astutely notes that studies of objective and subjective well-being can inform each other, whereby the domains from the objective social indicators are used to define the objects for subjective ratings, and measures of subjective salience are used to develop weights and scales for objective indicators.

Part III examines the concept of measurement as it relates to the governance and advancement of democratic societies. In recent decades, scholars have revisited the role of associations and all sorts of voluntary organizations as essential ingredients of a democratic society. In his study of the role of government and leadership in a civil society, Colin Campbell (Chapter 5) focuses on neo-liberalism and its impact on social welfare in Anglo-American states. He argues that the neo-liberal view that the role of state should be minimal in a laissez-faire economy has led to a crisis in leadership and a decline of the welfare state. With the growth of inflation and declining economies during the 1970s, citizens in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States became convinced that "interventionalist" government could not solve social problems. For Campbell, the measure becomes the ability of leaders and legislatures to define the appropriate role of the state. Also, the measure of public leaders "holding the microphone in public discourse" will determine the future of the not-for-profit sector which could encounter impossible burdens in a minimalist state. He argues that the role of the independent sector rests "not in a mad dash to catch bodies as they fall through safety nets, but rather to contribute to maintaining a vibrant civil society."

One of the most important roles of nonprofit organizations is to advocate causes in the public interest. It is this role that is most identified with the contribution of nonprofit organizations to democracy. Authors John McCarthy and Jim Castelli (Chapter 6) argue that measuring policy advocacy of nonprofit organizations is the major goal of research, but much needs to be done before that goal is achieved. Policy advocacy must be measured across all nonprofit organizations, not simply the small group of organizations that are called advocacy organizations. Furthermore, advocacy efforts need to be compared with those of business, government, and political organizations in order to measure the particular contributions of nonprofit organizations to policy advocacy. The authors outline a broad research agenda for defining advocacy, identifying direct and indirect advocacy activities, and studying both institutions and individuals.

From the role of public leadership, Julian Wolpert (Chapter 7) addresses the question of measuring the impact of various types of nonprofit organizations. He takes a broad approach by focusing on distributional impacts, not just income redistribution. His emphasis is on the ability to measure the "incidence of benefit," that is, who benefits from different types of nonprofit organizations and how. Since the Depression, the government rather than not-for-profit organizations has had the primary role in income redistribution and the provision of safety nets for the poor. Nonprofit organizations play a supplementary role in this responsibility and, at times, are partners with government in providing services. In the scant research available on the beneficiaries of nonprofit organizations, there seemed to be little redistribution.

While the measurement of inputs of nonprofit organizations has improved over the last decade, available data on outputs, outcomes, and impact are very primitive or nonexistent. Wolpert argues that measuring outcomes will become even more important in an era of government devolution and cutbacks in funding. He also notes the importance of trying to measure the "distinctive and independent agenda" of nonprofit organizations in their distributory role that is based on enrichment of civic life, ensuring quality and variety in community services, and responding ethically to community needs.

In the last article in this section, David Mathews (Chapter 8) wonders whether it is possible to "regenerate public life." Mathews presents a paradigm of what public life looks like in order to perhaps strengthen it. He asserts that no one knows if public life can be renewed, but possibly his set of assumptions built on learnings might eventually be "tested by experience." His research reveals, for example, that strong communities have a "civil infrastructure" or a group of networks, associations, and organizations that provide channels of communication and a form of public space for deliberation among citizens. Practices that become habits include the ability of citizens to name problems, to make decisions together through public discussion about how to act on these problems, to engage in public action, and to evaluate or judge the results of the public action. Communities with successful public lives have different ways of using power, and these are inclusive and lateral, not vertical. Ultimately, a community makes decisions through public deliberation, by taking public action, and by assuming responsibility as citizens in judging results.

Part IV examines the concept of measurement from the vantage of subsectors and special populations. While citing the importance of history, sociology, political science, and economics to women’s studies, Kathleen McCarthy (Chapter 9) argues that a multidisciplinary approach is needed to measure women’s philanthropy and its impact on society. Research on women has shown the importance of literacy, religion, and independent sources of income upon the development of women and the development of societies in which they lived or live. While she clearly finds intrinsic value in qualitative research, she argues that an important first step for quantitative measures is to collect statistical data by gendered categories in studies of nonprofit organizations and in women’s giving. The impact of various special populations is difficult to measure unless statistical systems identify organizations, such as women’s organizations, or women separately in statistical systems of individuals.

James Connell and Adena Klem (Chapter 10) argue that traditional approaches to evaluation in education reform efforts have done little to provide the body of evidence necessary to assess the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of education reform to either public or private donors. They present a plan built on the theory of change, a method for collecting data to evaluate whether the implementation of steps to accomplish change is working, and a longer term plan to document the impact of an educational program over time on the lives of children. Measuring outcomes and impact must be comprehensive, but uniquely tailored to each specific change situation and within the confines of existing institutions.

Bradford Gray (Chapter 11) discusses the large sector of health care which is going through rapid change both in ownership characteristics (i.e., public, nonprofit, and for-profit) and in types of institutions (e.g., nonprofit and for-profit health maintenance organizations and home health agencies). He argues that although many traditional measures are useful, such as the number of patients served or number of beds, they do not measure community benefit, which might provide the best approach to distinguish between nonprofit, for-profit, and public hospitals and their individual contributions to community. Gray offers a broad definition of the items that might be included in a definition of community benefit. Unfortunately, data covering community benefit items are not widely collected, but Gray suggests that if such data were collected, it could help communities and local governments make better informed decisions when organizations consider converting to for-profit status.

Margaret Jane Wyszomirski (Chapter 12) takes on the challenging task of evaluating what might need to be done to measure the impact of the arts on society. She acknowledges that impact is currently measured in audience surveys, the number of arts agencies, level of expenditures, etc. To better measure the impact of the arts requires both better data collection and the development of indexes to measure economic impact, organizational health, educational impact, and community effect in the art world. Wyszomirski argues that the challenges of such measures are formidable, but the approach might help to overcome the "virtual invisibility" of the impact of the arts on society.

Martha Taylor Greenway (Chapter 13) surveys the efforts of human service organizations among United Way supported agencies to measure program outcomes. On the basis that the fundamental purpose of the human services sector "is to improve the condition of the people," she asserts that measuring the contribution of any particular organization is "tricky" in light of the variety of experiences, organizations, opportunities, and other people that affect human lives. However, she also asserts that organizations that attempt the process of assessment have realized other benefits such as improved performance, more motivated staff, and increased ability to recruit volunteers. She argues that there is no real need to define success, outcomes, and impact among agencies. Rather, she sees a need for organizations, primarily working in isolation, to join together to establish some comparative measures of outcomes among similar programs for the purpose of improvement more so than accountability or sanction. She concludes that even though some progress is being made to develop outcome indicators in individual agencies, much needs to be done to bridge "the achievements of individual programs with the outcomes that we theorize are required for community change."

In the final article of this section, Robert Wuthnow (Chapter 14) explores how to document the role of religious institutions in society. While recognizing that the Giving and Volunteering series inaugurated by INDEPENDENT SECTOR is quite new and not adequately analyzed, he suggests that religious institutions are engaging in a wide range of activities not regularly charted in existing surveys or data series. Groups engaging in activities include interfaith coalitions, community development partnerships bringing nonprofit and government organizations together, and various volunteer networks. Wuthnow recommends in-depth research at the community level in order to understand the existing complexity of the mix of existing organizations, affiliations, and partnerships. Only by understanding these complex mixes can aggregate data be created based upon a dense base of community data.

THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF MEASURING

The final section reminds us of why it is important to develop a research agenda and precise empirical tools to measure the impact of the nonprofit sector. Paul DiMaggio and Burton Weisbrod present ideas on how to approach the exercise, some pitfalls to avoid, and the potential rewards.

DiMaggio (Chapter 15) is cautious about the downside of instrumental rationality, the "sacred cow" of modern culture, which may be ill-suited to measuring the impact of the sector in which organizational goals are heterogeneous. Nonetheless, he finds value in the ritual of trying to calculate the impact of nonprofit subsectors because of its power "to bring people together, to define identities, and to move people to seek change . . . [through] a kind of religiously infused social movement." Specifically, the exercise may help the sector clarify its objectives, focus the attention of managers and trustees on their organizations’ missions, provide a nonthreatening context in which different parts of the sector coalesce and generate new potentially valuable research.

Weisbrod (Chapter 16) provides an insightful overview of the need for carefully developed evaluations of the nonprofit sector as a whole, of obstacles in the process, and of proposed approaches. The focus of his inquiry is the degree to which the expansion of the nonprofit sector over the past three decades is economically efficient and desirable. Weisbrod advises caution when attempting to measure sectoral outputs and outcomes. The danger, he argues, stems from the fact that nonprofit organizations are more likely than for-profit firms to provide outputs that are difficult to value and hence measure. A flawed attempt at measurement would yield a systematic underestimation of nonprofits’ social contributions.

Despite the difficulties, Weisbrod argues that the exercise is critical for a number of reasons. First, the nonprofit sector has not been granted the justification (or status) held by privately owned, for-profit enterprises throughout American history. Therefore, when nonprofits clash with private firms, the nonprofit organization "is on the defensive to demonstrate its social value." Solid evidence that nonprofits make a difference and that they perform economically viable functions not afforded by private firms or government would clarify the unique role of nonprofits in society. A second rationale stems from the increased blurring of lines between for-profit and nonprofit activities, which begs the question of whether nonprofits are acting more like for-profit firms and, thus, forfeiting their claims to special status and privilege. Solid evidence on the contributions, successes, and uniqueness of the nonprofit sector could help inform the ongoing debate about the organization of society into the three distinct sectors of government, business, and nonprofits.

CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS

The authors of this volume understand that measuring the impact of the nonprofit sector on society poses formidable challenges. The danger is that what can be quantified may not be the most valuable contributions of the sector. Furthermore, a focus on short-term, quantifiable outputs may derail the long-term goals of an organization. Issues of impact demand assessment over long periods of time. For example, lowering poverty levels in low-income communities may take multiple strategies from a host of diverse nonprofit organizations, the business community, and government. It will involve job skills, education, capital investment, citizen empowerment, and participation. While some outputs can be measured in the shorter term, reducing poverty and rebuilding healthy communities is a longer term investment.

If we want to know what works and what the components of successful efforts are, we need to begin to explore measures on several fronts, including program outcomes at the organizational level and community studies.

Program Outcomes
Efforts need to be made to systematically assess progress in measuring program outcomes at the organization level. An evaluation of accumulated learning from several organizations and foundations would be a first step in assessing the progress, pitfalls, and potential replicability of promising work in this area.

Community Studies
Data need to be collected at the community level based upon sets of benchmarks and indicators that communities believe they want to achieve. While many communities collect data, very few if any studies collect data from the perspective of institutional contributions across all sectors in order to determine the unique and cumulative contributions of various types of organizations. Furthermore, these studies need to include the types, level, and density of citizen participation in setting and achieving community goals.

In sum, the authors of this volume agree that the effort to measure the impact of the nonprofit sector is valuable even if, in a scientific sense, it is doomed and somewhat risky because of the current inadequacy of social science methodology to provide tools designed to measure those qualities of the sector that add value to society. It is abundantly clear that the real questions that need to be addressed in long-term studies are for the most part not addressed in current research. We have no guiding theories from which to base assessments of the sector’s performance and/or effectiveness. Further, experimentation in the design of sophisticated quantitative and qualitative methodological tools to measure performance is encouraged. Ideas about the contributions of the not-for-profit sector are abundant, but data required to address the power of these ideas are scant.

Meanwhile, practitioners in the field are busy collecting measures to tell their unique stories. In the end, we believe that the potential exists for impact analysis to enhance the reflectiveness of the nonprofit sector, to encourage a dialogue between researchers and practitioners, and to create more sophisticated ways to think about the sector and its goals. As Professor DiMaggio reminds us, "assessing the sector’s impact is, strictly speaking, impossible. But then alchemists made significant contributions to modern chemistry, even though they never succeeded in turning lead into gold."

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Ehrenberg, J. (1999). Civil society: The critical history of an idea. New York: New York University Press.

Fullinwider, R. K. (Ed.). (1999). Civil society, democracy, and civic renewal. Lanhan, MD: Roman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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O’Connell, B. (1999). Civil society: The underpinnings of American democracy. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The emerging nonprofit sector. Manchester, UK: University Press.

Skocpol, T., & Fiorina, M. P. (Eds.). (1999). Civic engagement in American democracy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.

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