What Philanthropy Can Learn from Healthcare Benchmarking

Performance measurement is an important dilemma facing the philanthropic sector. Charities with similar missions may operate in parallel but lack shared, validated yardsticks with which to assess their social impact and efficiency. Other sectors facing similar needs have made notable strides in performance measurement. Healthcare, in particular, offers a useful analogy. Considerable recent progress in healthcare performance measurement invites emulation. This paper examines these developments and how the nonprofit sector can adapt them to benchmark performance