• How to Start and Grow a Think Tank
  • Prologue
  • Planning
    • Guiding Principles for State Think Tanks
    • Principles, Specialization, and Free-Market Think Tanks
    • SPN Professional Peer Mentoring Program
    • Do's and Don'ts for Lobbying Group: Charity Activity in an Election Year
    • Holding Think Tanks to High Standards
    • A Think Tank's Bottom Line
    • Measure Success, Not Just Output
    • Waging the War of Ideas: Measuring Success, Maximizing Impact
    • Sample Business Plan
  • Legal Documents
  • Staff
  • Board
  • Sample Board Job Descriptions
  • Infrastructure
  • Fundraising
  • Events
  • Networking and Outreach
  • PR and Marketing
  • General Management
  • Resources
• Grassroots Leadership Guide to K-12 Education Reform
• Taking Donors Seriously
• Fundraising Fundamentals

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Measure Success, Not Just Output

Jon Caldara, Indepedence Institute

Let’s face it.  We are in an odd business.  You realize this when you’re trying to explain just exactly what you do for a living to your mother-in-law for about the twentieth time.

After about a half hour going around in circles don’t you just want to say, “Listen mom, if we do our job right a lot of liberals get hacked off, get it?” Now that’s a great measurement.

Since we are in such a peculiar field, it’s hard to know if we are doing our job right.  Private sector businesses look at their bottom line, productivity, and market share.  What do think tanks look at to measure effectiveness?  It is not a simple question.  There is no one answer. 

But keep in mind: whatever you measure you will improve. 

So here’s the point: Don’t measure what is easy to measure. Measure what is important.  And what is important is political change. 

Yes, putting out paper is good.  But our job is not writing or research, it’s changing the political climate through education to make free market reforms possible. Let’s be honest.  Putting out paper is a lot easier.

Of course it’s good to manage your output.  By all means, record how many white papers your organization produces, how many press releases you put out, hits to your web site, and the like.

But our job is to engage ideas.  Papers, mailings, brochures, newsletters, and websites are great tools.  But they are only tools.  Don’t let them distract from your true focus – real world change. 

We all want to show our contributors that we are using their investments well.  Other charities can to point to their achievements like the new hospital wing or increased scholarships.  We can’t.  It is hard to show that ideas are taking hold, making it tempting for us to show investors a stack of paper.  Instead show them that your think tank making a difference.

Here are a few of the measurements and results we have seen at the Independence Institute:

What free market reforms have you helped turn into reality?

We have been very fortunate in Colorado.  Many of the concepts the Independence Institute has championed over our 19-year history have become reality.  Dangerous ideas like charter schools, open enrollment, school report cards, school vouchers, term limits, tax and spending limits (the Taxpayer Bill of Rights), competitive contracting of transit services, firearm concealed carry and pre-emption, High-Occupancy-Toll lanes, flat income tax rates and many more reforms were all incubated at Independence. 

What bad ideas have you helped stop?

Collectivists never run out of bad ideas or creative ways of pushing them.  From tax increases, to smart growth, to socializing medicine (and you know how long this list could go), we provide the ammo to shoot them down.

How much do you anger the bad guys?

If we are not hacking off collectivists, then they must not consider us a threat.  But we are a threat.  We are a threat to their social engineering.  If they are not calling us names, we’re not doing our job.

What the People for the American Way said about Independence is typical, “The Independence Institute is the most influential ultra conservative think tank in Colorado… (It) has long been at the nexus of the State’s voucher movement, and closer look at this organization exposes the radical ideology that is driving this movement in Colorado and other states.”  Glad they noticed.

Do you have a place at the table?

Can you get your people on boards and commissions?  Having them on advisory boards, review boards, audit committees and the like provides you with more credentials, impact and networking.  It also helps in gathering intelligence of what the other side is up to.  It’s more effective to make trouble from the inside than throw rock from the outside. 

Have your people made it into government?

Who can do the job better then we can?  The left has a great system for grooming candidates.  Think tanks can be a farm-team for principled officials.

My two predecessors at Independence have made the jump to elected office (suckers).  John Andrews is the President of the Colorado Senate, Tom Tancredo is in the U.S. House of Representatives.  But just as importantly, many employees and senior fellows have moved on to elected offices, judgeships, administration positions, even to the U.S. President’s Cabinet. 

Are you reaching policy makers before they become policy makers?

Once they are in office, politicians are in demand and hard to access.  Building relationships via candidate briefings, outreach and individual meetings give you an “in” when they get into office. 

Are your events a “must attend?”

If you overhear a politician say, “I don’t want to go their dinner, but I’ve got to be seen there,” you know you’re on the right track.

Are you in the media?

Politicians should never be quoted in the papers.  They’re too boring and don’t want to offend anyone.  We can say things politicians won’t, but should.  Do reporters, talk-show hosts, editorialists seek you out, even just for counter balance?  We can make reporters’ jobs easier.

Remember, reporters report news.  “Think tank publishes report” is rarely news.  Action is news.  When we toppled a ten-foot stack of textbooks at the capital to show how tax dollars going to the teacher union could better used, that gave the cameras something too look at.

Are you becoming the media?

If you want it said right, say it yourself.  It has taken Independence a long time, and a lot of luck, to establish ourselves in the media.  Dave Kopel (the Institute’s Research Director) and I write regular columns for different area newspapers; our op-ed network covers the state’s papers; I have a 3-hour radio program every weeknight on Denver’s 50,000 watt station and we produce a weekly TV show for the PBS station.

What is your access to policy makers?

Will they return your calls?  If they don’t then they must think you don’t have much influence or expertise.

How often are your experts asked to testify or work with legislators?

Do they call you? Consultation with policy makers and opinion leaders is where we have our biggest success.

Are they trying to impersonate you?

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.  Are you such a threat they need to counter you?  In the last four years three separate liberal “think tanks” have been formed in Colorado to oppose us.  It’s wonderful that the left is spending three times our annual budget to counter us; of course their organizations should rightly be named the “Dependence Institute.”

Do insiders need you?

How often do lobbyists and interest groups want to talk to your people?  Are they trying to get your buy-off on their plans?  If so, you are either seen as a key to getting them done, or a threat to stopping them.

Are you getting personal?

In the end personal relationships are the most powerful weapons in our arsenal.  Turn off the office photocopier long enough to go out there and meet the people you need to influence.

State think tanks should be public relations firms for free market ideas.  Your papers on a policy maker’s shelf are a good start.  One of your ideas in his/her head is even better.  But an idea turned into reality is best of all.  And that should be the goal we measure.

Jon Caldara is the president of the Independence Institute, Colorado’s free-market state think tank.