CivicSponsor is a San Francisco based startup company working to build better communities through cooperative design, development, and funding for civic projects.

It comes a very good time when public coffers are suffering in step with public trust and faith that government is effective, open, and accountable. As interest builds for "opengov" or Open Government, nonprofits will not be left out of the equation. Demands on the transparent operation and effectiveness of nonprofits will also increase.

CivicSponsor has the ability to develop a framework for which citizens can compare the effectiveness of their nonprofits. For example, if you were to put one dollar into a Vending Machine, what would you get out? So, when you put your charitable donation toward an organization, is it important to you that you're getting the best for your money?

Sometimes, a person may prefer a specific charitable cause for any number of reasons, but in the case that the person is more concerned with the Issue's outcomes, rather than a specific approach by which to accomplish that task. If nonprofits completed annual forms of outcomes, rather than just economic forms, people would be able to analyze and determine which Organization provides the best outcomes for the dollar - or simply put in systems terms: What process generates the most outputs from equivalent input?

Urban.org Taxonomy of Nonprofit Outcome Indicators provides a glimpse at what a quantitative and qualitative measurement might look like. http://www.urban.org/center/cnp/projects/outcomeindicators.cfm