Third Sector organizations operate in the public space between the state, market, and community. They produce both social outcomes and reproduce important values like representation, democratization, quality, effectiveness, and sustainability. These values are important to various public constituencies like founders, donors, workers, volunteers, and beneficiaries, who may have different expectations and interests. Evaluating Third Sector organizations requires considering both the impacts produced and how effectively values are communicated to constituencies. The values make up an evaluative framework to identify impact. This study aims to establish a hierarchy of values through public perceptions, verify the presence of important values through a qualitative survey, and analyze how economic/impact evaluations link to perceptions of different constituencies.

1. Values and
outcomes in
public space
an evaluation
framework for Third
Sector Organizations
Third Sector (TS) is considered as Public constituencies
intermediate area (Evers 1995) between the Social Management
State, the market and the community, a public
space of social protection and development, • founders,
endowed with the values (Cabral 2005): has a double nature, as a social mode of • donors,
• representation of collective interests;
producing outcomes and reproducing values, • workers,
• democratization; as an aims mission accomplishment providing
• quality; • volunteers,
public goods. The values are assumed by, and the
• effectiveness;
• and beneficiaries.
• visibility; facts impact on, the public constituencies of the
• public culture; have different Expectations, Needs, Capacities,
• universality; Third Sector Organizations (TSO). Interests and Representations (ENCIR) about social
• autonomy;
• social control;
issues in the public space of TS (Cabral 2007).
• and sustainability.
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Economic and Impact evaluation, Arguments to evaluate impact, We propose that
alone, although well established economy and values
procedures, deserve some attention The evaluation of TSO social achievements must consider
• The importance to gauge mission accomplishment; the entanglement of facts and values, measuring the
because: • The condition of social control as an insufficient management impacts and learning its effectiveness from the
• The intangibility of some benefits; tool in TSO (Cabral 2005); communication of public space values.
• The TSO purpose to disseminate values as well as produce • The political concern among TS that operates more closely to
ENCIR are constraints between facts and values,
material benefits; its frontiers with the market and with government resources,
public funds and public policies in developing countries; appraised by public constituencies and must be taken as
• The possibility to fall in a kind of fact/value dichotomy
(Putnam 2002); • The accreditation of TS capacity to provide development parameters in the evaluation.
• The presence of tensions between ENCIR associated with conditions and public goods; and The ensemble of public space values make up an
different public constituencies; • The financial agencies request of both impact and economic evaluation framework, or an evaluative space (Sen 1997),
• The difficulties of TSO to prepare control groups; evaluations, as a regular procedure. to identify the impact.
• The limitation of methods adapted from the area of public
policies and the market.
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Conclusion: public space Application of this framework Methodology
flourishing and objectives of this survey
Focusing one outcome, we have asked the public
The results of impact and economic 1. To establish a hierarchy of values through public constituencies to order values from the most
evaluations projected onto the framework of constituencies’ perceptions on the public space important to the least important one.
a qualitative evaluation of those public values associated with benefits (done). sample
values, indicate the public nature’s
2. Verify, by a qualitative survey, the presence of • Beneficiaries 918
flourishing, or the mission accomplishment by • Founders 198
values pursued by the TSO (in progress).
social management in TS, with the effective • Donors 150
reproduction of values tied to outcomes. 3. To establish, analytically, the links between the • Workers 948
economic and impact evaluation findings and the • Volunteers 366
PC’s perceptions (to be done). Total n= 2580 in 50 TSOs
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Findings
• Different PC have different hierarchies of values, Perception of values (ALL) Perception of values (DONORS)
associated with the benefits.
Order Value m Order Value m
• Quality is the most important value to all. 1 Quality 7,59 2,34 1 Sustainability 6,80 2,94
• Social control is the most important value only to 2 Effectiveness 5,78 2,75 2 Autonomy 6,60 3,12
Beneficiaries (excluding quality). 3 Sustainability 5,48 2,97 3 Quality 6,40 2,68
• Social control is the least important value to Donors, 4 Democratization 5,36 2,78 4 Universality 5,80 2,63
Founders and Volunteers. 5 Universality 5,31 2,84 5 Visibility 5,40 2,63
• Values associated with the benefits (quality, 6 Representation 5,30 2,70 6 Representation 5,40 2,96
effectiveness) are, generally, more important than 7 Public culture 5,16 2,61 7 Effectiveness 5,28 2,89
values associated with the public nature 8 Social control 5,16 2,97
(representation, public culture, autonomy, visibility). 8 Democratization 5,24 2,89
9 Visibility 4,96 2,74 9 Public culture 4,52 2,52
• Standard deviations may be interpreted as tensions, 10 Autonomy 4,90 3,02
dissensions of perceptions. 10 Social control 3,56 2,38
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Perception of values (BENEFICIARIES) Perception of values (FOUNDERS) Perception of values (WORKERS)
Order Value m Order Value m Order Value m
1 Quality 7,56 2,34 1 Sustainability 7,30 2,11 1 Quality 7,93 2,18
2 Social control 6,24 2,89 2 Quality 6,36 2,56 2 Effectiveness 5,97 2,79
3 Effectiveness 5,82 2,76 3 Universality 6,24 2,87 3 Public culture 5,43 2,59
4 Democratization 5,63 3,07 4 Visibility 5,73 3,02 4 Democratization 5,39 2,55
5 Representation 5,51 2,70 5 Effectiveness 5,61 2,62 5 Universality 5,22 2,92
6 Public culture 5,11 2,58 6 Autonomy 5,21 3,22 6 Sustainability 5,18 3,00
7 Universality 5,02 2,67 7 Democratization 5,00 2,86 7 Representativity 5,06 2,56
8 Visibility 4,97 2,82 8 Representativity 4,88 2,69 8 Social control 4,97 2,96
9 Autonomy 4,59 2,90 9 Public culture 4,73 3,01 9 Autonomy 4,96 3,09
10 Sustainability 4,55 2,72 10 Social control 3,94 2,51 10 Visibility 4,87 2,72
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References
Perception of values (VOLUNTEERS) Perception of values (EXCLUDING BENEFICIARIES) • Cabral, Eloisa Helena de Souza (2005) Une double perspective de controle
Order Value m sur da gestion sociale. In: Concepts of the Third Sector: The European
Order Value m Debate ISTR-CRIDA, Paris available at www.crida-fr.org, accessed
1 Quality 7,92 2,18 1 Quality 7,60 2,35 06/20/2007.
2 Sustainability 6,77 2,85 2 Sustainability 5,93 2,99 • Cabral, Eloisa Helena de Souza (2007) Terceiro Setor: gestão e controle
3 Representativity 5,66 2,95 3 Effectiveness 5,76 2,75 social, São Paulo, Saraiva.
4 Effectiveness 5,49 2,68 4 Universality 5,46 2,91 • Evers, Adalbert. (1995) Part of the welfare mix: the third sector as an
5 Democratization 5,23 2,62 intermediate area, New York, Voluntas, 6, (2) 159-182.
5 Universality 5,49 3,00
6 Representativity 5,20 2,70 • Nussbaum, Martha and Sen, Amartya. (1995) The Quality of Life, Oxford,
6 Public culture 5,05 2,51 Clarendon Press.
7 Democratization 4,93 2,59 7 Public culture 5,18 2,63
• Putnam, Hilary. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy,
8 Autonomy 4,61 2,80 8 Autonomy 5,06 3,07 Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
9 Visibility 4,54 2,47 9 Visibility 4,95 2,70 • Sen, Amartya. (1997) Quality of life and economic evaluation, Academia
10 Social control 4,54 2,88 10 Social control 4,63 2,87 Sinica Economic Papers, 25, (3).
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Eloisa Helena de Souza Cabral S ã o P a u l o | B r a z i l
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