Fancy Dashboard / Wrong Data
Let’s talk about one organization we worked with—a thriving community-based nonprofit with a heart of gold and a dashboard that looked like it belonged in NASA mission control.
They were tracking everything: number of meals served, kids tutored, volunteers onboarded, donations received, social media clicks… They even had heatmaps of donor behavior (which, honestly, looked like something from an FBI file).
But when we asked them: “Are you actually moving the needle on your mission?”—they paused.
Because while their data was impressive, it wasn’t insightful. They were drowning in lag measures—metrics that only revealed impact (or lack thereof) after it was too late to course correct.
They were counting the results but ignoring the causes.
If you’re only measuring how many people showed up, you’re already too late.
It’s like stepping on the scale after eating three birthday cakes and saying, “Well, I guess that didn’t work.” Lagging indicators—those numbers we tally after the fact—tell you what happened, but they don’t help you change what’s going to happen next.
And that, my friend, is the difference between good intentions and actual impact.
Here’s the Core Insight:
Lagging Metrics Tell You If You’ve Won. Leading Metrics Help You Win.
In nonprofit land, most leaders are trained—explicitly or implicitly—to focus on the obvious metrics. These are your Lag measures:
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Dollars raised
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Number of clients served
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Event attendance
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Graduation rates
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Website traffic
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Volunteer hours logged
These are great for annual reports, donor decks, and victory laps. But they’re rearview mirror metrics. They only tell you what happened after the dust settles.
Lead measures, on the other hand, are the daily, weekly, rhythm-driven actions that drive the outcomes you care about:
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Number of donor touchpoints per week
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Number of strategic partner meetings booked
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Number of staff one-on-ones
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Percent of students attending tutoring three times a week
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Frequency of goal check-ins across departments
They’re not flashy. You probably won’t impress your board with them—until they see your impact has doubled and your team hasn’t burned out in the process.
Leading measures are predictive. They give you a steering wheel, not just a scoreboard.
Why This Matters More in Nonprofits Than Anywhere Else
In for-profit businesses, if something isn’t working, the market will usually let you know—loudly and quickly. Sales dry up. Reviews tank. Shareholders start hyperventilating.
But in the nonprofit world? You can coast on feel-good stories and inflated numbers for years while your actual mission is stagnating. Or worse, drifting off course.
We’ve seen this again and again: passionate teams doing great work, but stuck in patterns that don’t evolve because no one’s tracking the real drivers of change. Everyone is working their tails off, but it’s like rowing a boat with spoons. Exhausting. Misdirected. Ineffective.
If You’re Not Sure Where to Start, Start Here
Here’s the most common thing we hear from leaders about metrics:
“I know we need to track the right stuff—but I don’t know what that stuff is.”
Truth be told, we can make this easy…because there is a very good chance that if you’re struggling with metrics what you need is an operating system.
Here’s a quick gut check:
- Wildly inconsistent execution, quality and accountability
- The vision sounds good but you’re getting luke-warm results.
- The team is really busy but you’re not getting momentum.
- Every year it’s harder to raise the same amount of money.
- Not sure you’re measuring the right things in the right way.
- Uneven culture has good people leaving while also blocking great hires.
- Role confusion and bottlenecks across staff, board, and volunteers.
- Dropped balls, last-minute scrambles, and something is always on fire
If you are experience 2+ of these, you’re probably needing an Operating System. And maybe, the ImpactOS could be right for you. You can download the Info Pack to get more details, but what most people do is also schedule a brief call to get their questions answered (below).
Want to get more info on the ImpactOS?
Schedule a call and get all your questions answered.