Over the past years, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has developed a new tool to measure the number of youth most likely to reach the positive outcomes a grantee aims to attain. This measure, called an “active service slot,” is a “slot” in a program occupied by a participant who is utilizing the program at the level of intensity and length of time that, according to rigorous evaluation findings, are related to achieving optimal benefit.

Active service slot data present a picture of how many program participants receive a high enough “dosage” of a particular program (over a specific length of time) to ensure that they are receiving the full benefits of the program. This measure provides another analytical tool to examine an organization’s success in maximizing the chances its work has in improving the life prospects of a youth participant.

Active service slots differ from traditional measures of tracking numbers of youth served and organizational capacity. For example, imagine a classroom with 100 desks, where one class is held in the room each semester. Of the 100 students who attend the first semester, 50 stay and attend the same class in the second semester. Thus the total number of unique students over the year is 150. The “capacity” of the class at any one time, however, is 100 students.

Now, imagine that an independent evaluation of this class found that to achieve an “A” in the class, the typical student needed to attend 90% of classes over a semester. Thus the “active service slot” metric here tracks the number of students who have at least a 90% attendance rate, since that’s the level of participation necessary to gain full benefit of the program.

Five organizations — Nurse-Family Partnership, Youth Villages, Citizen Schools, CAS – Carrera Pregnancy Prevention Program, and Big Brothers Big Sisters — have begun to create specialized formulas to calculate “dosage” and “duration” of program participants. These organizations all have rigorous, independent evaluations that prove or demonstrate their effectiveness. This metric is new to all five organizations and has required adaptation of their data collection and performance tracking systems. The road to developing accurate formulas and collecting this type of data has been challenging and time-consuming, and is compounded by the unique nature of each organization’s programs. The classroom scenario above is a very simplified example of the metric. (For the original article describing the metric in greater detail, see Calculating Program Capacity Using the Concept of Active Service Slot. )

In addition, while this type of metric can be very useful in discussing social impact, we want to note its limitations. This tool was developed to track the ability of grantees to reach the maximum possible impact with the youth they serve. However, it is critical to note that youth participating at less than “optimal” dosage are still obtaining benefits and reaching positive outcomes. For example, in the classroom scenario, while only 50% of students attend class 90% of the time, the students who attend less than 90% of the time are still learning and are able to reach positive grades.

Over the past few months, these five grantees have finalized their definitions of active service slots for their programs, and the Foundation has begun to collect this information from each organization. We see this new tool as one of many available to us to assess a grantee’s overall performance. The Foundation plans on working with the rest of our portfolio to apply this metric and will also report active service slot performance over the coming years.