Building Positive Data Culture and Applying Learning from Good Measure Programming
I’ve been fortunate to participate in many Good Measure offerings throughout the years, from the first cohorts of Measuring What Matters and Data Leaders Academy, to attending the Data Institute, and taking advantage of other ad hoc offerings. The opportunities have always felt relevant and helpful to me in my professional journey. As I would take my learnings back to my organization and try to integrate them, I would find myself at an impasse and unsure of how to connect the ideas and concepts I learned to the reality of my organization.
I found a lot of the strategies around building a positive data culture prioritized gaining support and buy-in from agency leaders, with the hopes that it would infiltrate through the organization from the top down. In my organization, leadership was already committed to deepening our culture of learning and use of data, but we still struggled to integrate it into decision-making because we didn’t always have the right data or the shared language to talk about the data.
Addressing these challenges brought other pain points around organizational capacity and who is tasked with the labor needed to expand our efforts. Real culture change starts with those closest to the work. For my organization this was the very busy direct service staff who worked out in the field. To continue to do this work meant asking already constrained direct service staff to do more; collect more, measure more, record more, reflect more. To what end?
The biggest lesson I learned during this time was it was impractical and unfair to ask individuals to do more or try something new unless there were clear benefits to their work. To be successful, I had to prioritize buy-in from direct service staff. This meant instead of asking leadership what data they needed or wanted to make decisions, we asked those in the field what data they needed or wanted to help them better serve our stakeholders. Approaching the task from this vantage point also opened conversations among leadership about what data is collected and reported, why it is valued and by whom. I think that is a better indicator of an organization embracing a positive data culture than any Key Performance Indicator dashboard.
One of the things I have admired and appreciated most about Good Measure’s offerings is how agile they have been in developing programming to meet rising needs out of the non-profit community. One way they have done this is to have individuals who participated in their programs bring their lived experience and perspective back to the Good Measure community by facilitating trainings and workshops. While early programming felt targeted towards administrative staff and/or leadership, new programming is targeting participants at all levels of an organization to attend.
The Quarterly Series features accessible entry level data topics presented by someone within the community. I was lucky to host a session in the fall about effective storytelling with data where participants worked through how to best present some information to one of their real-life stakeholders. There was a great mix of roles and tenures in the room, which only added to the richness of conversation. The reach of Good Measure allowed for the convening of diverse participants and helped the Quarterly Series to become a new space for positive data culture to grow.
I look forward to a future where there are more opportunities for nonprofit professionals of any tenure, skill, or position to come together and continue to build their understanding and commitment to embrace a culture of learning and data. We all have a role in creating this future, we just need the space and opportunity to grow.
Kaylee Romero is a Good Measure Alum, MWM Planning Committee member, and Good Measure partner.