So, What Is a Randomized, Controlled Trial?

One term comes up repeatedly in discussions of nonprofit measurement: randomized, controlled trials, or RCTs.

In a randomized, controlled trial, the researcher randomly assigns some people to participate in a nonprofit’s programs or services while others do not. That latter group, called the control group, establishes a baseline to measure the effectiveness of the nonprofit’s work. You’ve likely heard about these types of trials being used in pharmaceutical research: Some patients take the new drug and others receive a placebo.

There’s debate about the morality of a nonprofit running tests that intentionally deprive one group of something that may potentially help them. Randomized, controlled trials also require a lot of data, which requires lots of time and effort.

Plus, not all nonprofits do work that is well-suited to these types of experiments. Nonprofit efforts that are place-based and collaborative -- for example, several nonprofits working together in a community to prepare more children for kindergarten -- and don’t have clear causal relationships to outcomes may not be appropriate for randomized, controlled trials.

Lisbeth B. Schorr, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy, argues that it’s important not to discount other types of evidence, such as information gathered during daily observation and non-evaluation research.

But many people argue that randomized, controlled trials speak more authoritatively than any other type of study. And they say if a randomized, controlled trial proves the effectiveness of your organization’s work, that kind of data will speak powerfully to donors.