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shows that prevention, screening, and educational programs are highly effec- tive in reducing both the incidence of and mortality from cancer, ACS has moved away from research and toward prevention and awareness programs.
With creativity and perseverance, nonprofit organizations can measure their success in achieving their mission—by defining the mission to make it quan- tifiable, by investing in research to show that specific methods work, or by developing concrete microlevel goals that imply success on a larger scale. Given the diversity of the organizations in the nonprofit sector, no single measure of success and no generic set of indicators will work for all of them. Nonetheless, our experience and research indicate that these organizations can—indeed, must—measure their performance and track their progress toward achieving their mission. They owe their clients, their donors, and society at large nothing less.
The late John Sawhill was a director in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office; David Williamson , direc- tor of communications at The Nature Conservancy, is a fellow at the Aspen Institute, in Washington, DC. Copyright © 2001 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.
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