A Toolkit on Performance Measurement

Your program serves hundreds of homeless families each year, and you think you are making a difference in people’s lives. But how can you find out for sure? Performance measurement helps you better understand and improve your program. Fundamentally, it is a process that systematically evaluates whether your program is making an impact on the clients you serve and helps to guide efforts to improve results. Too often program managers view performance measurement only as a reporting requirement for funders or a tactic to gather data for research interests — both are important, but performance measurement can be used to accomplish so much more.

1. Performance Measurement 101: What Is Performance Measurement and Why Is It Important?
2. Outcome Logic Models: A Key Performance Measurement Concept
3. Building a Performance Measurement System for Your Program: How to Design a System and Build It from Scratch
4. Performance Measurement as a Management Tool for Your Community: Using Results to Manage or Change a Homeless System
5. Measuring Big Change: How Will We Know When We End Homelessness? Understanding and Implementing System-Level Performance Measurement

• Exhibit 3-2: Blank One-Year Logic Model Template
• Exhibit 3-3: Blank Multi-Year Logic Model Template
• Exhibit 4-1: Program-Level Reporting
• Exhibit 4-2: System-Level Reporting
• Exhibit 5-1: Monitoring Progress on the Ten Essentials to Ending Homelessness
• Exhibit 5-2: How to Calculate a System Outcome
• Exhibit 5-3: Sample Performance Measurement Framework