How come nobody told us????

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein (attributed)

Original caricature by Lori Kaylor for Highview LLC.

Before jumping in to the day, I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to glance at today's Wall Street Journal, and the main Page 1 story says the recession is over!!!!

How come nobody told us?

From the article:

It's official: The 2007-2009 recession, which wiped out 7.3 million jobs, cut 4.1% from economic output and cost Americans 21% of their net worth, marked the longest slump since the Great Depression.

The end of the recession occurred in June 2009, 18 months after the economy began sliding into a downturn in December 2007, said the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, a group of academic economists that determines the widely accepted benchmarks for U.S. recessions.

How come nobody told us that out here on Main Street? From here, 2009 looked like the worst economic mess in generations. Foreclosures, layoffs, and suffering -- that's what we were looking at in June 2009, when the recession ended. And while I have data showing that, historically, nonprofits have done OK during recessions, this one was different. This one hurt. But the article points this out:

But while the declaration marks a milestone, the economy still faces stubbornly slow growth and thus persistently high joblessness. That point was driven home by a report Monday from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which said it doesn't expect the U.S.'s unemployment rate to fall to prerecession levels until at least 2013.

This reminds me of the time President Harry Truman said:

"I want a one-armed economist, so that the guy could never make a statement and then say: "on the other hand."

This was Truman’s way of venting his frustration over economic advisers who offer straightforward recommendations, then hedge their bets by tacking on a slew of caveats, often beginning with the phrase "but, on the other hand..."

OK so here's my point: I have been planning a series of blog posts on measurement for nonprofit communicators. I have some things planned but haven't taken the time to write them. This news today, though, helps make the most fundamental point of all: Are your measurements meaningful? Does it help our jobless friends to know that the recession ended over a year ago? Does it help to tell the nonprofits that are struggling to raise funds that their troubles are over, because the recession is over? It is simply a meaningless measurement for most of us. I have a colleague who consults with some of the same nonprofit and foundation clients that I do; he has a Ph.D. in organizational measurement. He puts it this way: "There is a difference between a stastistical difference and a practical difference. Lots of data is statistically valid but of no utility."

I am a very strong advocate for measuring PR and ad campaigns for my nonprofit clients. It can be done, and with significant precision. But sometimes nonprofits confuse measurement with simply collecting data. Time spent collecting data, writing reports, creating pie charts, all of which tells us nothing meaningful. The fundamental thing about measuring nonprofit public relations, marketing or advertising campaigns is that strategy must come first. For example, unless you have done solid research to make sure you are targeting the right audience and delivering the right message in order to get those people to do what you want them to do, it doesn't matter how effective your media campaign is in terms of reaching people, does it! If you are reaching the wrong people with the wrong message, any numbers about audience reach and penetration are utterly meaningless! So strategy comes first. I would rather wage a campaign based on a well-researched, solid strategy and not measure it at all, than to skip the hard front-end strategy work and create pretty charts and graphs about the number of people we have reached with our unresearched, unstrategic message.

In fact, NOT measuring can be smart! I recently was hired to work on a Best Practices study of the Corporate Social Responsibility practices of some of the nation's best-known brands. In each interview I asked about measurement. I was stunned -- and impressed -- by one answer. A major national retailer -- I can't say the name, but trust me, you shop there -- said, "We used to collect all that data but we stopped. We took a step back and realized that we never did anything with the data; it didn't help us do the right thing. And it took our store managers a lot of time to put it all together. We have more profitable things for them to do than to collect data that we don't use, so we quit doing it. In terms of our charitable affairs and Corporate Responsibility, we just try to do the right thing."

Do the right thing. That is one helluva great measurement, I'd say!

Have a great day, by any measure!! (After all, what's the alternative!)

Steve Cebalt, Author,
The Communications Handbook for Nonprofits and Foundations



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