Finding Meaning in the Numbers: Tools for Data Analysis & Dashboards

Editor's Notes

• #2: Getting to know audience:-size of organization?-have you personally been involved in a website redesign before?-do you own a tablet or smartphone?Note: we’re assuming you know something about redesigning websites in general. All that stuff still applies. We’ll be focusing on the mobile aspects today.
• #16: Let’s sum things up – what are the reasons we don’t measure?
• #17: Roca is a nonprofit in Massachusetts, founded in 1988, focused on high risk youth Initially they weren’t measuring, so didn’t really know what the impact of their program was.The measures they did have available – new arrests and job stability – showed that program was not really resulting in change.Also, youth that stayed longer than 28 months in the program had worse results overall.Developed a theory of change that involved 5 Stages of Changed. Remodeled their program based on this, accompanied by indicators.Implemented a new data system (Efforts to Outcomes) which they customized to their program, making sure that only data relevant to program is collected.System allows for tracking each interaction with youth, and recording where they are in the stagesChanged program to 2 years plus 2 years of follow up, and refined target audience to highest risk men 17-24 years old (criminal record, no high school credentials, no employment history) plus young mothersOf Roca’s 2011 graduates, 90 percent sustained employment and/or engaged in education; 86 percent had no new arrests after leaving the program; and 81 percent of the young mother population reported no new pregnancies. Have since opened up a new site.Strong relationships within the community and data sharing with partner organizations (in particular, local police department) a big component of success.Another success factor is training for all staff and ongoing professional development in data entry and using database.
• #18: Highly recommend doing this workbook on your own in more depth. We are just going to skim the surface of it.Don’t expect your data journey to happen overnight. This is not a “go back and put in place tomorrow” kind of thing. Set your expectations – it will probably happen over months, if not years (both because you need to build the culture, and the tools) and that’s ok.What we’ll look at next are some steps you can start taking to looking at data in one area of your organization. This will help you build skills around looking at data, and hopefully be the first step at a bigger look at the impact, theory of change and results that your organization is creating.
• #19: You don’t have to do everything at once, or in the right order. Once you get started then you’ll start asking more questions, which will help give you direction.ALWAYS LINK BACK TO IMPACT!!
• #20: There are lots of aspects of your organization to measure. To start out, pick one so you can focus your efforts and it will be less overwhelming.Here are some examples.Note that there is some value to just diving into existing data and playing around. But you don’t need to attend a workshop on that, so we’ll talk about the more structured approach here.Now define a particular action question within that area. It’s notgoing to be easy—your action question must be specific enough tobe measurable and to help you decide how to move forward, but alsoimportant enough to really matter to your organization. Let’s start bybrainstorming.What are some tactical questions you’d ideally like to be able toanswer in this area that would help your organization improve?
• #21: I’ll use my own organization as an example. Our friendly mascot Katsumoto will come along with us.The first step is to ask the question. The equivalent to most charities would be to look at fundraising, or a specific program.
• #22: The workbook goes into a lot more depth on all of these
• #24: The next step is to collect dataYou probably already track a lot of data but don’t use it. This is the case for most nonprofitsOf course whether you have the RIGHT data, and whether it’s shared with the RIGHT people, is another question
• #25: Other related pieces:-theory of change-data sharing-collecting the right data-training & professional development related to collecting & using data
• #26: Need some kind of report or dashboard where you can gather data and present it in a way that you can have a meaningful discussion about it.We’ll be talking about this more soon.
• #27: The best way to make progress is to force yourself to look at your metrics regularly
• #28: The next part of the presentation will focus on the “sharing data” or “displaying data” step.
• #29: There are ways to reduce the manual aspect with Excel e.g. automatic import from other files
• #30: Old school NTEN, that is!
• #32: Do a live demo
• #35: Note that many tools are quite expensive – we will focus on ones that are low cost, but if you have thousands of dollars or more to spend then there are certainly lots of options!These features also apply to all types of dashboards in some way, but this is the area where you’d most likely be evaluating multiple tools which is why we’re discussing it here.
• #36: Live demo?
• #37: Integrates with lots of other accounts, like Google Analytics, Mailchimp, etc.You can link it to a Google Spreadsheet to display data, as long as your data is in columns
• #39: This is a very simple example. It’s basically a web page, so easy to create and update. It’s really more like the PowerPoint example we saw before than the other dashboard we’ll look at.
• #40: More complex example. Developed in Drupal? (confirm)
• #41: Resources:http://conviosummit2011.com/?wpfb_dl=480 (make sure this is the right link, it is a report)