The Tyranny of Success: Nonprofits and Metrics

NPQ could not have a better way to mark the transition from 2013 to 2014 than with this beautifully told and powerful essay from Bill Schambra of the Bradley Center of Philanthropy at the Hudson Institute. In it, he tells some memorable stories from the front lines of nonprofit work and raises haunting and essential questions about how an obsessive focus on outcomes and insistence on proof of “success” is its own brand of tyranny that threatens to gut the work of the sector.