The Board claims that its Benchmarks reports have had a substantial impact on popular and legislative debates. The state legislature has maintained continued support for the Board. The exercise has also attracted extensive attention outside the state. The Corporation for Enterprise Development, a national nonprofit organization that promotes strategies for economic and social development, credited Bench marks as a successful attempt to build methods of accountability that did not “simply count the number of program inputs”(Oregon Progress Board 1998). The Ford Foundation’s Innovations in American Government program gave the exercise an award for innovation in 1994, and the National Governors’Association has encouraged other states to begin similar performance-monitoring exercises.Benchmarks,Vice President Gore said in 1996, was “the wave of the future” (National Performance Review 1996, 57).