Here is a superb illustration of outcomes measurement from audio recording of Nathan Adam’s presentation at the 2011 Christian Leadership Alliance conference in Dallas:
Recidivism rate of faith-based prisons was a small fraction of the state prisons.
When he worked in the Florida state government, there were three faith-based prisons in the state. Their recidivism rate was 1/16th the rate of the state prison.
It isn’t the initial idea of a technology that makes life so fantastic for all of us. It is the next round of people who figure out how to make it ridiculously cheap that lets everyone enjoy the really cool inventions. So explains Matt Ridley, of the Wall Street Journal, in Three Cheers for the Cheapeners and Cost-Cutters.
“A feature of innovation is that the greatest impact of a new idea comes not when the light bulb goes on over the geek’s head, but when the resulting technology eventually becomes cheap enough for many people to use—perhaps decades later.
This is the driver behind the tremendous productivity gains in the last few centuries.
Christianity Today points to a study which starts to answer the question. Their article What’s a Congregation Worth? provides a nice illustration of a 1997 study by Professor Ram Cnaan.
In his study, he quantifies an urban congregation contributes around $140,000 of value to the local community. CT states he updated his estimate to $476,000 in 2009.
Some of the factors quantified:
Previous posts here and here mentioned four emerging trends identified by La Piana Consulting in their report called Convergence- How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector. Will now discuss the last trend they have noticed.
As mentioned previously, I will be quoting from their report a lot.
“Sector boundaries are blurring” – (more…)
(cross-post from Attestation Update)
A graph of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia shows the devastating losses suffered during the advance on Moscow and retreat. It is the best illustration I’ve seen of creatively presenting a complex body of information. Dare I say it is a beautiful graph? Why is this of interest to us? It shows a powerful way to communicate statistical data.
You can see the graph here at Cartographia. Click on the map to enlarge.
One sentence of explanation allows you to interpret the entire view – (more…)
(cross-post from Attestation Update)
I’ve been interested lately in creative ways to show data. We accountants are great at absorbing a lot of numbers and finding the patterns. Other people who don’t have our mind-set can not see what we see. We need to find new ways to explain things.
How would you summarize the location and intensity of wars over the last several centuries? One of my favorite historians would do that verbally over the course of a full-length book or a dozen columns. (And I’d love every word of it too!)
Jordi Colomer has done so in a 5 minute video:
Found an unusual number of product releases today. Also a world-wide scoop on developments in the accounting world that will be of interest to CPAs.
At The Summa, Professor Albrecht scoops the financial market in his report SEC to Promote Cash Basis Accounting. (more…)
(duplicate of post from Attestation Update)
Attorney Jay Shepherd gives us 500,000 reasons to worry about retaliation claims.
He explains that when something bad happens to an employee after filing a discrimination claim, it makes it look like the employer retaliated against the employee for filing the claim. Looks like payback. That is a bad thing. Very bad. That is a serious offense in the eyes of the law.
Might be worth your time to ask your funders if they really need to see audited financial statements. If the only reason you’re having an audit is to meet the requirements of a few foundations, call them to see if they still need it. Perhaps they would be happy with reviewed financial statements.
Bryan Baughman describes a number of things you as a ministry leader should make clear with all of your staff. In his post, Is Your Church Exposed, he suggests you should:
Perception is reality – I really dislike that statement since it excuses people from trying to understand things they don’t understand, but then that is just my perception (yes, the last phrase is a joke!).
God knows, an article in The Economist, shows us the magazine’s perception of the church community. Their perception is likely to be representative of many people. (more…)
We need to understand the perception of the church world by people outside our communities. Particularly important to consider now are the perceptions of those with regulatory power. The report from Sen. Charles Grassley’s staff of the Senate Finance Committee has opened up discussion of expanded regulation and oversight of churches.
After the Cooks Source fiasco discussed here and other posts, it is delightful to see a company that knows how to apologize and takes clear ownership of their problem.
37signals provides a number of collaborative software products. I don’t use their services, but I thoroughly enjoyed a book they wrote on the lessons they have learned in their business. Enjoyed it so much I wrote an Amazon review, which I discussed here. I read their blog everyday. I heartily recommend it.
Anyway, last November and December their flagship program had a lot of intermittent outages.
The series of posts on looking into the future have been combined into one page. This allows you to read the posts in chronological order. You can find them in the “Peering Forward” tab at the top of this page or you can click here.