Evaluation is clearly a sticky wicket. Now that we're smack dab in the middle of the information age, it's easier than ever for nonprofits to track all kinds of data that help them measure and evaluate their performance. We know down to the minute how many people are downloading reports, signing up to volunteer, sending emails to decision makers, visiting our clinics, etc. Pervasive Internet access and ever-shrinking hardware mean that we can collect and store more data than ever before. And we can publish that data more easily than ever before, increasing our transparency as we increase our measurements.

No one will argue that this is a bad thing. But are we really measuring what matters? Do all these numbers really tell us if we are meeting our missions? Take this number. Tell me what you think this number says about NTEN:

• 7158: September site visits to date at http://nten.org.

It does say a number of things. It says that we are less popular than Amazon.com and Facebook. It also says that we are not even beginning to scratch the surface of the number of nonprofits that could know about us.

But here's what it does not say:

1. How engaged those 7158 people are with the NTEN site, or the organization;
2. If those 7158 people think NTEN is worthwhile; and most importantly:
3. Whether or not we are achieving our mission

I'm going to guess that this is the case for most nonprofits. Your web sites visits don't, by themselves, tell you anything about whether or not you are achieving your mission. You also don't learn if you're achieving your mission by tracking the number of clinic visits you get each year, or how many donors you have and what their average gift size is.

But you should be tracking these things. Because all together, they can tell you if you are, in fact, meeting your mission.

So let me paint a clearer picture of NTEN now. You can read about our mission in full, but in short, we create community to help our members find and learn about the tools, resources, and ideas they need to use technology to change the world.

Here are some of the stats we track to help us measure that mission:

> Site stats - nten.org (Year to date)

• 102,981 visits
• 62,292 Unique visitors
• 324,276 page views
• 3.15 pages per visit
• 3:12 average time on site

> Site stats - groups.nten.org (Year to date)

• 14,310 visits
• 8,581 unique visitors
• 101,469 page views
• 7.09 pages per visit
• 5:59 average time on site
• 5,070 profiles on the platform (3,367 at same time in 2006)
• 10,322 message posts
• 122 affinity groups
• 291 shared resources

NTEN Affinity Group Participants

> Membership: 2007 year to date (vs. same time period in 2006)

• Individual: 512 (427)
• Nonprofit: 464 (278)
• For-profit: 139 (144)
• Total Individuals receiving member benefits: 2783 (1936)

NTEN Membership Growth - 12 months

> Webinars: 2007 year to date (vs. same time period in 2006)

• Number of webinars: 24 (21)
• Attendees year to date: 732 (648)

> Newsletter: August 2007 (August 2006)

• Subscribers: 3873 (2673)
• Open: 1040 (950)
• Unique Clicks 394 (219)

NTEN Connect Newsletter Subscribers - 12 months

> NTC ATTENDEES:

• 2004: 644
• 2005: 793
• 2006: 812
• 2007: 1136

Looking at any one of these numbers alone -- especially without any of the trend information -- doesn't tell you very much about whether or not we are achieving our mission.

But together, they start to paint a picture. You can see the tremendous growth in our organization -- from members to newsletter subscribers to affinity group participants -- indicating that we are expanding our reach and aiding more nonprofits in service of our mission. You can see that more people are engaging in our programs -- clicking through to newsletter articles, attending webinars and the NTC, etc. -- indicating that we are providing better content to people, allowing them to learn more and do their jobs better, another key piece of our mission.

But all these numbers only get us part of the way there. How do I really know that NTEN is achieving its mission?

I get emails and phone calls and hallway conversations every day from people who want to share how an NTEN experience helped them learn or grow. And sure, I could add those to our giant spreadsheet of stats, but it would lose a lot in the translation.

At the end of the day, nonprofits are not about the number of widgets we move off the shelves. We are more than metrics. We are stories. We are the tales of the lives we touch and the communities we shape. And though metrics are a necessary and good part of our work, they are not the story.