fairsay: Benchmarking: What is it?

Duane Raymond, online campaigning guru at UK-based agency fairsay provides a solid overview of benchmarking for nonprofit organizations and activist causes, an he says  “that people love to throw around at work, but very often is misunderstood.”  In this blog post, Duane outlines the practice of benchmarking (what IS and what IS NOT benchmarking) as well as common approaches, and forms of analysis used in benchmarking.

There are generally a two different styles of benchmarking:

1. Internal benchmarking: where results are compared internally over multiple different activities, time periods, geographical areas, etc.
2. Peer Benchmarking: where results are compared between organisations in the same sector

Furthermore, benchmarking can either be:

1. Quantitatively-oriented: where metrics are calculated and compared e.g. what is a good performance level and who was closest/furthest to it. This is generally data-right (more initiatives compared) but context-poor (less information about each initiative being compared).
2. Qualitatively-oriented: where processes and perception is critiqued and compared  e.g. what “best” looks and/or feel like and who was closest/furthest to it. This is generally data-poor (fewer initiatives compared) but context-rich (more information about each initiative being compared).

> Read the full post

Posted by irishg on September 8th, 2009 at 01:42pm