Mason argues that outcome measurement is only one piece of a nonprofit's work, and not always the most important part. He gives an example of literacy tutoring: we can concentrate on learning outcomes of students, but this overlooks student satisfaction, the human advances for the tutors, and the value of any rapport that develops between the student and the tutor.
Difficulty: Satisfaction, humanity, and rapport are hard to measure and quantify. And, donors seem to value them less.
Quandry: Some nonprofits focus on expressive rather than instrumental outputs. Hospice focuses on acceptance and other positive feelings among families. Make-a-Wish focuses on happiness and other positive feelings among sick kids. Alcoholics Anonymous focuses on wholeness and other positive feelings among recovering addicts. How do we measure outcomes in these kinds of organizations? Should we measure?
Mason, D. E. (1996). Chapter 1/The Importance of Expressive Outputs in Nonprofit Organizations. In Leading and Managing the Expressive Dimension (pp. 1-20). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.