Don’t Get Lost in the Matrix

In my first nonprofit senior director role, I remember being asked to complete a MacMillan Matrix for each of my programs as part of a larger strategic planning exercise.  For those of you who may not be familiar with this tool, one is asked to rate whether the program is a good fit relative to the organization’s mission, whether there are other like programs in the same geographic region and how competitive the organization’s program is relative to these other similar programs, and whether there are monetary advantages to the organization in offering the program.  Answers are plotted along an X and Y access, ultimately informing the organization as to whether they should invest in or divest from a program.  While somewhat informative at the time, the exercise was time-intensive and fraught with subjectivity.   Let’s see how this exercise might play out in a nonprofit business line with particularly well-defined outcome measures: workforce development.

The workforce development ecosystem is extremely congested.  This congestion lends itself to fierce funding competition.  Scoring on the MacMillan Matrix would inform most nonprofit leaders to divest immediately.  However, what if our hypothetical nonprofit leader had made an investment in a case management system last year and can simply pull up the executive dashboard versus a matrix to engage in strategic planning and decision making?  The dashboard shows this leader that the organization’s workforce development program is serving more individuals through two quarters than projected with 60% of individuals enrolled in the current fiscal year placed in jobs with an average hourly rate $5 above the local minimum wage.  These statistics are not surprising, since the leader can then glance at the positive graduation rates from the sector-based certification opportunities the organization offers program participants.  Our hypothetical leader is pleased, but there is one more set of data points to check: employment retention rates.  The rates for the organization’s placed participants temper the leader’s exuberance.  Retention rates are not what funders expect and the organization hopes for its participants.  

In a five-minute perusal of the organization’s executive dashboard, the leader can make well-informed decisions relative to investments and perhaps even more importantly, knows where to spend the organization’s most valuable resource – time – relative to strategic planning and decision making.