Cultivating a Strong Data Culture - Data Storytelling for Nonprofits

hello everyone welcome thank you so much for joining um I hope folks can uh see the screen and hear me okay so far thanks so much for your patience sorry for starting um a couple uh minutes behind here as we are resolving a quick audio issue um so thank you so much for your patience for that um let's go ahead and get started welcome this is data storytelling for nonprofits this is part three in our series um all about cultivating a strong data culture um it's okay if you haven't been to Parts on

e through two of this series if you're interested in slides resources please feel free to reach out to me and I'd be happy to share those um after this Workshop today I'm Ari I am your Intrepid facilitator today uh we are going to get to intros in a second but first let's check in on our learning objectives so we're going to be talking about data centered work culture data for program evaluation and data collaboration today as well as sharing some oops excuse me some free resources for further l

earning I'm also really happy to have Chris P and michen gasb with us as our featured speakers who are going to be leading our Learning Journey today Chris and michen work over at Kids First Chicago um and they partnered with us on a recent data project so I'm really really happy to have them on board showcase their organization uh we're going to get to their intros in a few minutes here but first we're going to cover some brief contextual info um we're also going to have two short group discuss

ions this hour that you can participate in um via chat if you like or you can unmute and use audio so you'll have an opportunity to connect with your fellow participants and discuss what what you're learning share your own experience um I am my co-worker Susan pin will be monitoring the chat throughout or you can also raise your hand um or use audio and video we're also going to close with a Q&A section as well so we're going to have ample time to talk about any specific questions that you might

have so with our house group being done welcome um let's introduce ourselves in the chat please please go ahead and post your name your pronouns if you wish um your organization your location I'm really interested in knowing where everyone is based uh while you're all doing that I will intro myself so you know a little bit more about me and my connection to data science so I'm AR zika my pronouns are they them and he him and I'm the community data fellows program manager here at the data Scienc

e Institute at the University of Chicago and I'm based in beautiful Chicago today uh my background is in publican academ libraries and municipal government so I have a really deep love and appreciation for how data informs and improves our work especially in the social impact sectors uh my program Community data fellows essentially pairs you Chicago graduate students with nonprofits like yourselves uh to develop and complete capacitybuilding data science projects designed for each organization's

individual needs see a lot of folks lots of folks from um Midwest awesome hello Ohio friends and Midwest friends we have such a diverse group today I'm really excited to have you all on board a little bit of background about the DSi so DSi does all things data science at you Chicago um we're really built on three foundational pillars of Education society and research and we have a really distinctive approach to data science that is characterized by defining new Fields through rigorous inquiry a

nd also have really deep engagement with our communities our education portion includes undergraduate program multiple graduate programs as well as a new PhD program that we're very excited about we provide education and Outreach programs to affect sustainable and scalable change and we also have multiple interdisciplinary use driven research for tackling societal and scientific problems picture here is our most recent winter cohort of Fells um my work with our community data fellows program rea

lly intersects with our foundational Society pillar which we call Community centered data science our goals for Community centered data science include developing an ethical diverse and purpose-driven next generation of data scientists like these amazing fellows pictured here um we're working to build data science research and education capacity for mission-driven social impact organizations um and sustaining really long-term mutually beneficial Partnerships with them um like our partnership wit

h the folks over at kids for Chicago and we're also working with those organizations to scale impact across the social sector through continued development of open-source data science tools so let's talk about a little bit of definitions first just in case you're new to the terminology uh data science is not a monolith it is an interdisciplinary process of math statistics computer science domain Sciences communication social impact all these spheres are working together to distill Knowledge from

data sets knowledge about those raw data sets can turn into insights so insights and um uh ideas about our world our community our audiences our scope of work those insights can then turn into action so that means making decisions changing directions um improving processes scoping out plans I'm sharing this DSi graphic with you all because I think it really shows our unique approach to data science which is the inclusion of that social implications of data pieace because our approach is really

rooted in Equitable and inclusive solutions that are going to benefit all our community ities a little bit about the data maturity assessment I hope you all had the option to uh to take it um if not that's okay you can check through your email for the link that I sent you all to take this assessment later uh takes about 10 to 15 minutes to Think Through uh if you completed it you probably saw an overall score out of 10 and then a breakdown of three other scores in the sections of purpose practic

e and people um a little bit about this maturity assessment so what it is is a way for organizations to get a snapshot view of their data Journey um a tool for identifying ways um that you can strengthen your data practices and find areas of opportunity and growth what it is not is it's not a report card so if you are um seeing a score of like two three four don't be discouraged what this does is just show you where you have options for evaluating how you're using your data uh what your data and

collection and Analysis processes are and how data ties into your override overarching organizational Mission and culture so data.org builds their principles on three pillars purpose practice and people last time last session we talked about practice and how to center ethical data practices in your organization's work and your relationship with data this Workshop primarily focuses on this people portion which relates to how your organization creates a collaborative culture of being data informe

d and datadriven so why are we talking about data as a part of organizational culture it's important because data is not a oneperson job it's essential to benefiting insights and decisions throughout your organization data culture is a part of good storytelling right it's a group effort to tell the story of your organization and impact you probably already have like Communications or marketing or engagement staff who are involving all these different pieces um and perspectives and faces in showc

asing your working in your impact and a solid data culture is very similar to that it's connecting across departments teams or working groups to show a holistic view of your organization and your impact some indicators of a healthy data culture are some things like having a data expert on your leadership team so going a little bit beyond just leadership buy in for a data culture and having someone who is familiar with those practices on the leadership team um it looks like you're an organization

investing in data tools or trainings for staff that information available organization wide datadriven decision making are you um making strategy decisions based on the data that you've gathered about your uh about your programs about your impact it also looks like data engagement across all elements of your organization so from Frontline staff to leadership to boards to uh stakeholders and your data is accessible and relevant to staff it's not siloed off and it's open and available to people t

o learn from okay we have a little discussion moment here so we're going to spend a couple minutes just kind of sharing out some Reflections real quick before we dive into what Chris and michen are going to be leading us through so real quick just in a chat everyone kind of share and so we can get a sense of where we're all at in your specific organization do you feel like data is more of a team effort or is it more dedicated to one or two people um if you're not comfortable sharing that's okay

but just to get a sense team yeah it does sound like the dream patience thank you um I'll share a little bit about so at DSi in my role and experience my team works really really hard to make data a collaboration we're sharing a lot with each other um but a lot of other organizations you might see just have like one or two folks who are in charge of data and primarily engage with it is anyone interested in Sharing any uh any more singular folks any team- based folks oh thank you for sharing res

sharing that in the chat Susan awesome while we're reflecting on that too think about your organization's work with data uh what do you feel like your organization is doing really really well uh do you have a lot of collaborative conversations uh are you using data to evaluate your impact um I know we just finished annual report season so are you using data to talk about the meaning of your work are you engaging your community in data Julie says it's just me oh Julie I hope we can provide you a

little bit of connection as well oh thanks patient team effort about a little siloed um oh I'm so glad that you have multiple team members on that call that's such a great um a great thing to do to engage with that together um I'm happy that you're invested Brad um oh and Julie says that uh they do have collaborators but the only data person which I feel like is a very common common experience for a lot of organizations and I know michen and Chris are going to chat about that a little bit as wel

l so with that let's go ahead and jump in then um thank you for the discussion participation we're going to jump into the bulk of our Workshop content I am so happy to talk about kids first Chicago so kids first Chicago is an education policy and advocacy organization it's based here in Chicago um if you want to learn more about their work check out their website sign up for their newsletter to stay in the know um there are feature for this Workshop because they actually partnered with my progra

m the community data fellows program for the Autumn 202 34 um so they worked with a fellow on a project about evidence-based funding for public schools in Chicago and tied that into a larger kids for Chicago initiative to create more transparency around um how schools are funded here and the role of the community data fellow was to participate in data collection data cleaning so that this raw public data was op optimized to fit into a public facing tool that kids for Chicago is developing great

project happy to have them on board um couple intros Chris is the senior manager of research and policy at Kids First Chicago as part of the data science and research team Chris creates data and policy tools that expand access to Education data as well as knowledge of Education policy Chris has a be PhD in sociology and a MERS of urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as a ba in sociology from Northeastern Illinois University michen is a research data analys

t at kidsf for Chicago she used her expertise at technology data analyst data analysis and research to inform and Empower Chicago parents as decision makers in their children's K through 12 education michen graduated from Washington and Jefferson College with a ba in neuroscience and received an MS in integrated biomedical science from Rush University Welcome Chris and mcin thanks so much for having us can uh am I can everybody hear me right now is having a lot of technical difficulties earlier

um yeah thanks thanks so much for um inviting us to to speak today so uh just to start off uh kids first was formed in 2015 we're a education advocacy organization that uh focuses on parent organizing parents uh to try to get resources and shape policy uh our mission is to dramatically improve education for Chicago's children by ensuring their families are respected authorities and what their kids need and decision makers and their kids education and we do this by partnering with families to sup

port them and gaining these resources uh there's a link to the website there I don't think it's clickable but kids for Chicago New York um can go to the next side yeah so before we get into the the meat of the presentation I just want to give everybody a sense of some of the work that we do so first some of the policy work and then I'll touch on uh some of the parent organizing that we do so this is a list of um some of the work that we've done in shaping local policy in Chicago um we're going t

o talk we're going to use Chicago connected actually as an example today to talk about uh what collaborative kind of data projects look like uh at kids first and partnering with other organizations but just to to give you a sense of some of the stuff we've done the annual Regional analysis is um basically like a Factbook that helps shape CPS investment um Chicago connector we're going to talk about the accountability redesign we got involved for a while um Chicago had uh the school quality ratin

g program uh to shape basically what schools got resources and what schools got disciplinary action there was a lot of criticism of that uh that model and so CPS wanted to reshape uh what it's um accountability system looked like and kids first played a role in in helping shape that and engaging um we engaged more than like 20,000 stakeholders to create a new uh road map for deciding what that accountability uh uh that new system of accountability looked like uh gocps is a tool that allows paren

ts to um basically look up schools and help navigate Chicago's very very very complex school system um where there's many different types of schools and that kind of thing uh an enrollment Solutions is a re or two research reports that we did examining the causes of uh enrollment decline in the city of Chicago and uh then we had a sort of parent L effort to um to come up with uh Solutions and possible policies that people could Implement to address that uh so that's the policy sort of policy sid

e of what we do uh you can go to the next slide um some of the parent organizing work uh we have this is something that Michin is going to talk a little bit about one of the programs with that uh but essentially it's organizing parents around issues that they find important uh the first example our students or School Board is uh political sort of pressure lobbying work to try to make sure that the new the upcoming um boundaries for school the elected school board or representative of CPS uh pare

nts have fought to get you know new infrastructure the library and the Education First is um work that parents did to try to get uh an IB program and um a regional gifted program at schools so just some examples of of some of the work uh that we're doing you can go to the next slide um oh I guess I have maybe control over that I don't know um so today we're gonna we wanted michaelin and I are going to discuss some ways that data is um sort of implemented in the um or incorporated into kids work

and at some we're sort of going to go sort of at points abstract sort of general principles or ideas and then try to really delve into some examples um and then step back to sort of analyze it um so hopefully you'll find some of this useful I think it's important to to note that when we're talking about this we understand that this is this might some of this might be unique to kids first or might be unique to um advocacy and uh advocacy and activist types of organizations uh so I'm sure everybod

y's organization looks different but um yeah hopefully there's some kind of something that bits and pieces that that you all can take from this so we're going to start by talking about program evaluation and how we use data to augment the the work of the parent l or organizing um we'll go into talking about the collaborative data projects um to in focusing on that Chicago connected example um to give you a sense of some of the work that kids first has done in the past basically how we've used da

ta to identify problems like bring urgency to different problems and Chicago connected is is a good example that um uh as it's a a project that helped connect uh families and students to internet during the pandemic um and then we're going to f the the last thing we're going to touch on is some of the challenges that we are facing in our organization and trying to Center data um in the organization uh and ideally that'll that'll be kind of fruitful ground for some discussion uh the the challenge

s piece I think it's important to note that we michen and I were both hired um to sort of build out the data team in research aspect of the organization uh and it's a very cool I mean it's a very great thing to have in a a advocacy organization like some of the intent to build up a a data Department uh but there's also challenges to doing that um sort of people's perceptions of what data teams do and that kind of thing so we'll talk a little bit about that and dissect that um yeah so that's what

we got for today and I'm going to pass it off to michen to talk about program evaluation thanks um so as Chris mentioned I'm first going to touch on program evaluation generally speaking and its importance as one Avenue for centering data in your organizational culture uh then I'll go through a few examples of program eval uh that we've conduct conducted a kids first before bringing it back to how you can use uh the data collected to make data driven decisions about how to conduct your programs

moving forward so so at a glance program evaluation may seem kind of like Common Sense uh the idea is to assess your program's efficacy in meeting metrics of success or accomplishing primary outcomes for any particular program internal external what have you um however program evaluation serves as an important pillar or form of infrastructure for centering data practices across multiple departments or teams within your organization um we find it most effective to initiate this evaluation proces

s collaboratively so uh having program directors work with data team members from the start ensures that the information necessary for evaluating a program success is captured uh ensures that all involved departments are on the same page and that the program and any future changes to it uh will be data driven um so now I'll go over a few examples of how kids first conduct some of its program eval and next slide thank you uh so I'll start with our parent leadership fellowship program this program

exists to teach parents about the principles of community organizing and the history of Chicago public education with a focus on racial Justice and Equity uh so to evaluate this program our data and Community engagement teams work together to develop assessments that would occur before during and after each uh annual cohort runs and so before the program begins we collect Baseline information from the parents or around our program learning objectives uh then during the program we run um what we

call a participatory valuation so these are live discussion-based evaluations between Community engagement members and the parents and aim to assess mid-program progress and collect free form thoughts uh that allow for co-design uh with the parents and provide a sense of how the program is going um then finally at the end of the program uh we rerun the assessments from the beginning of the program program to assess Improvement Andor achievement of the cohort's learning objectives so these evalu

ations are then discussed between the data and Community engagement teams uh to understand what went well and What needs Improvement um utilizing these data to reform and change the program moving forward and again I want to reiterate that I think that it's this process that really um makes data a huge Focus uh collaboratively between multiple departments um even though not all may be data experts taking this uh very planned out collaborative approach really um is important for getting visibilit

y in in the data end of things uh in in ensuring program success so next yes uh so another example of program evaluation on a much larger scale uh that involved many organizations across the city I'd like to talk about how we approached Chicago connected um so for a bit of background Chicago connected as a groundbreaking program that provides no cost high-speed internet service to CPS students and families uh kids first helped initiate and carry out the program to help families uh connect to Int

ernet services during the pandemic when schools moved to Virtual learning so evaluating Chicago connected was handled a bit differently than what we do for parent leadership uh the parent leadership fellowship program uh as Chicago connected was co-led with City partners and community based organizations multiple organizations came together to develop annual surveys to distribute to program participants so each year the focus of the evaluation changed for year one the objective was to assess if

internet service providers were meeting the needs of families in requirements set as part of the program and of note uh that survey showed that the internet service providers were not meeting uh the agreed upon standards and so the Chicago connected program leadership was able to use these survey data to confront the providers and ensure that these issues were resolved in the following year so in year two the questions surrounding internet service quality were asked again along with additional q

uestions surveying interest in digital literacy programs uh which shaped program offerings that were made available in year three and then at the end of year three a co-designed survey again between all of the involved organizations was sent out to evaluate the impact of these digital offerings and general program satisfaction results from the final survey were then used to draft recommendations for the city of Chicago as a formal leadership kind of shifted uh to be primarily in the hands of the

city um after year three and so the big takeaways from this example are once again that program evaluation serves as an anchor uh for datadriven decision-making in reform but also as an opportunity to ensure that all collaborative partners are on the same page as using data as a focal point um and ensures that everyone is invested in the program and its outcomes so thank you uh to wrap up our segment on program evaluation I'm going to take a step back and briefly touch on what to do with your d

ata or reports um following a completed evaluation so it's important to bring these data to your whole org uh while the entire org doesn't necessarily need to be involved in like the nitty-gritty or iterative discussions that occur between program staff um keeping everyone aware via like all staff presentations or debriefs can be another good opportunity to collect General feedback or thoughts on ways to improve a program or to steer where to take the next initiative so these debriefs Also Serve

to keep everyone up to date on program successes um and added visibility helps keep keep everyone on track toward data driven organizational goals and uh Chris is going to talk more on the importance of that visibility a bit later uh but for now I'm going to shift gears and to talk more about uh how data can be used to Kickstart and maintain uh collaborative initiatives uh so as Chris mentioned earlier I'll talk uh bit more about Chicago connected and how this project utilize data is the kind o

f nucleus that uh brought organizations from across the city together and have them working toward a common goal so Chicago connected began with an anal Anis of public data surrounding household connectivity in Chicago and this was co-led with the Metropolitan planning Council and so in this report uh published near the start of the pandemic and the shutdown uh we found that more than 100,000 CPS students did not have an active internet connection at home and were unable to attend uh virtual cla

sses so this report served as a sort of alarm uh raising a feeling of urgency and caused the city to reach out to Kids First for C oration on how to address the connectivity Gap so our policy team drafted a plan and this plan um detailed the need for collaboration and co-leadership with community- based organizations um across the city as well as uh the need for buyin from philanthropic sources to to fund our project um so we partnered with teachers Network Chiefs and principles to create a proc

ess for selecting community- based organizations to partner with uh looking specifically for orgs who could better reach priority communities with the lowest rates of internet connectivity um with these Partnerships and co-leadership Chicago uh without these Partnerships and co-leadership uh Chicago connected would never have made the incredible reach to the 60,000 households to provide internet service and so these Partnerships and leaderships Leadership efforts uh were fostered and sustained t

hrough the sharing of data and experiences after initial relationships were established weekly meetings were held where updates were shared from all involved organizations so successes were celebrated and future directions and Improvement were discussed openly um these efforts I think held the momentum needed for sustaining such a large initiative um overall I think Chicago connected does stand as a bit of an anomaly in its scope and success but does speak to the power of data and analytics for

building a team of driven organizations uh working toward a common goal and for another example of collaboration over a data initiative I'm going to pass it over to Chris thanks um another example it's kind of a different route um to collaborating around policy issues and and trying to use data to do do that but uh currently Michaela and myself are working on a project uh to try to make the uh States funding formula which is the evidence Bas ebf stands for evidence-based funding uh trying to mak

e that formula U more accessible and understandable to a broader public um just a some shorthand so for context uh ebf is rolled out in 2017 um and it changed the exist the formula at the time which was a student-based funding formula which is basically you have a a set it's almost a mostly uniform Set uh uh amount of money per student student and that's how education is costed out switching from that to a resource-based model which takes into account all the different resources that make educat

ion work and then cost it out that way so it sets like ratios for teachers and Librarians and and what have you per student cost of technology and that kind of thing um it's a very cool formula uh and I think it addresses uh what's an education policy called adequate funding so the formula sets these adequacy targets which are like the seen as the um minimum amount of money that school district would need in order for education to function um it's very neat it's very complex um and so we're tryi

ng to trying to make it trying to make it less opaque and demystify it and that kind of thing um in this respect we're part kids first is part of a coalition that's doing advocacy work around ebf um and it's just going to meetings speaking to other data people uh about some of the work has been one way that um that we've kind of tried to create this um create I guess interesting projects through coalitional collaboration with our uh various coalitional Partners to augment the work that we're doi

ng um which has a lot of benefits I think um in my experience I I some of the I think most fun and interesting ways to to work on projects is just a touchbase with people not only in your own organization but across organizations to kind of I know get that sort of cross-pollination going spark ideas um bounce ideas off of other people so Micha and myself are bouncing the uh the idea of the project that we're working on on other people that work in this the educ the ebf uh advocacy uh sphere and

it was you know it's it's nice to hear like validation or what have you that we're not completely way off course um but yeah if anybody has any more questions about that I'd be I'd be happy to go more into it but just kind of giving everybody a different another sort of sense of how kid first is collaborating with other organizations to create these sort of data data driven projects um we can go to the next slide now uh once again going to Pivot um so I think one way to think about the work that

michen has has talked about is that this is the sort of using data for operations using data to promote policy these are things that our organization have done more recently as I said our supervisor Jose pacus he uh hired both myself and michaelin to try to um really build out the the role of data in our organization um and it's again it's a great it's it's great to have that kind of leadership um to do that but there's also many challenges to doing that um you can go to the next slide so I gue

ss what oh so you get the slide before that yeah um I think there's a recognition that data science and sort of broader research agendas can be a really powerful tool but there is there's a culture in in our organization of kind of treating data in a narrow way uh and it's sort of a means ends way so like off you know often other departments will come to us with these kind of ad hoc research requests like pulling data points or doing lit reviews to sort of substantiate things that they're doing

for their campaigns um and while these These are important and they have I I think the the fact that they have an immediate impact sort of shapes people's perception of the extent of what a data team uh can really do especially in um in advocacy organizations uh and so really the challenge for us is trying to move Beyond this to build that more of a infrastructure that allows the data and research team to sort of be semi-autonomous and able to carry out um Carry Out the mission of the organizati

on and and um uh achieve the Strategic objectives of the organization um in my experience this is kind this is common um sorry read question oh uh in in my experience this is kind of uh common and activist organizations more generally um there's a couple examples I can think about from uh an electoral organization that I worked with um in which again data was treated in a very sort of mean and short-term way so it' be like when when I presented I like projects of doing analyses where like member

ship is to be able to build power or doing setting up a research agenda around some of the um the political program of the organization I think it was hard for people to really wrap their heads around well what does that get us what does that get us right now and so it sort of was seen as like this wonky like oh Chris he likes working with data H and it was tough to say well no this is actually this this this project and this infrastructure could benefit um the organization and I think in simila

r ways this this can happen in kids first it's I maybe it's like a you could see it as like a growing pain of the organization of like the data team is being um birthed and it's a painful process sometimes oh sorry that was ter why did I go to that metaphor ah um anyways we can go to the next slide uh Michaela and I we um we were thinking about it and we sort of like pulled out like a few four different pieces of the challenges and I think you could also view these as um I don't not not principl

es but important I guess issues um that need to be worked out to really build out a data um having that sort of again semi-autonomous but connected to the mission sort of mission driven semi autonomous um data team and sort of research department so leadership is a big one or you mentioned this earlier having having both like yeah people in leadership that get what the project is because it's not immediate it's not it doesn't uh it's not always sort of intuitive to everybody about like the exten

t or the sort of full possibility of what um uh what a data team can do seeing data or is almost B based on yeah um yeah this the yeah this happens all the time with us and and this is something that we're trying to move away from but it's it's a it's a process um I think F being able to fit projects into um the Strategic priorities and mission of the organization is another key piece of this uh again this idea of having having teams that are mission driven and not necessarily always having to b

e sort of the top- down order that comes that is like you know not having everything needing to be dictated from the director of the organization is an important thing because it allows different departments to kind of do their thing and grow the organization together there's a cultural issue again awareness of what data teams can do um and then the there is just like the technical issue of the skill involved in in some the data work and being able I mean one thing that we're trying to do is bui

ld out um an infrastructure that's capable of handling some of these ad hoc requests while also building the necessary um the the necessary Machinery to be able to really effectively uh use data in our work you can go on to the next slide so I kind of already I touched on some of this but um just wanted to give some concretes in terms of what's going on at kids first to to move Beyond these ad hoc um requests so in terms of the leadership issue our supervisor is uh really doing uh the hard task

and I think this is an important task of playing the role like doing the triage role um which good managers should be able to do so when those the the um delus of requests come in having a manager be be able to be the person that kind of stops that and helps prioritize is really helpful for our work because it I mean well one that's the the role of the manager and two like michaan and I are working on a bunch of other stuff so it's like hard for sometimes it's hard when you're in the weeds to be

able to step back and be able to do all the prioritizing um and Al also having a supervisor that's able to communicate with other leadership about the the role basically what they're trying to um accomplish through the data team um in terms of the Strate strategic issue uh we just try to in terms of what we prioritize um and kids first we call them big rock issues it's basically like strategic objectives so we try to be very intentional in communicating the the work that we PRI prioritize that

that fits into the these big rocks or big rock issues or um strategic objectives the cultural issue is tough um I think it comes partially I mean I think all these things are connected uh you know carving out time at meetings I think is an important one to um to try to sort of uh help help people understand the work that we do because it's we we sometimes get the the look that we're like this is everybody will laugh at this because we're a bunch of nerds uh but we get the look of like oh there's

the cool the cool kids in their office just you know like doing their thing and it's like that's our work is inherently like we are just on our computer and sometimes we're chilling and listening to music and doing our work and and and what have you and uh you know there's there's images at least about like what what we're doing and what we're not doing and I think communicating with the rest of of Staff especially people that don't have sort of a data background to like what the work is uh is

is quite helpful um and especially sometimes like the of time that goes into some of the work like some of the ad hoc requests that come come in I it I think it's easy for people to say oh it's just a quick data point you can grab it or just do this quick analysis and sometimes those that that quick work actually takes quite a bit of time um and then finally in terms of this technical issue in in uh more efficiently kind of managing some of these ad hoc requests uh building a data infrastructure

is is really important so the program evaluation piece of it um uh oh I'm terrible I did not mention Asha is our our other cooworker who really works on the membership database building that infrastructure is really crucial to to handle some of the ad hoc requests of hey can you get me a list of members active members and find what where they live or find what wordss they live in and that kind of stuff having that built out allows us to much more efficiently deal with some of these these TKS we

're also trying to build more of a robust data structure um around like different School data to be able to more easily access or or respond to Quick requests that come up the the trouble in this technical part of it is just finding dedicating the time to do that because again it's not an immediate thing it it it takes a lot of time for payoff that comes in in the future um but yeah so these are kind of all ways that we're trying to work on um trying to more effectively Center data in the work t

hat we do and I AR I will pass it back to you now thank you so much uh we are taking our second discussion moment here so you can feel free to share in the chat where you can raise your hand to use audio or video um and then after that we'll move into a Q&A which I see um I'll take a brief pause point to to share um in the Q&A section down at the bottom of the zoom it looks like someone did ask what software Services were used for program evaluation part and michen has a a great really thorough

answer for that so check that out if you're interested in some specific uh software tick um options for program evaluation um but for this discussion moment kind of based off of uh the the four uh V culture roadblocks facing um organizations what would you think is the priority one for you I know uh Dominique you mentioned that um you're getting all lot of uh ad hoc requests which uh thank you Chris for addressing that in the chat as well um Christina says that leadership alignment is really maj

or and at the time it was due to education and level of knowledge and Trust in a story that the data told that is really really fascinating um thanks for sharing that Christina the Micha Chris do you have any um notes on how to build trust in the day with I'm guessing that would maybe fall into that culture bucket as well and I'm sorry can you can you repeat the full I'm not seeing the question there trust in yeah it's not it was Shar by Christina um not necessarily a question but more um a comm

ent about how Christina says that um the in a previous career uh leadership alignment was a major issue um and that came down to like difficulty um and a lack of trust in the story that the data told um so when you're looking at this issue of culture like um Beyond just trusting um your work that you're doing with data and sharing like what you do every day um how do you build trust in like the data itself that you're accurately reflecting um your uh experience impact SCP of work h i so I don't

know if michaa correct me if I'm wrong I don't know if there is a lack of trust in the data aspect of it I think I think there I think it's difficult for us to convey sometimes like the the importance of so for program evaluation the importance of having a um upto-date uh accurate membership database for example and so like it can I think there's the issue there and it's I think I you could could argue that it's it's a place of of trust um why that's that's important to have but I think sometime

s like so the challenge for that is I think there's a perception of like oh you're you're just data wonks and you like having a lot of data and trying to find ways to build like the understanding of like no this actually this helps the the organizing like having an accurate upto-date membership database like helps the organization so this is not just random data we're getting and trying and so you know one way to that we have done that is just really trying to work closely with the community eng

agement side of the work to be to say okay like what type of inform um what type of information is important to have that you can have readily accessible let's work that into our membership database but yeah so I think it takes some sort of that collaboration I guess communicate communicating collab ation I guess at some point I know that sounds so it's like it sounds so cliche or like like too obvious but I guess it is obvious it's just always a lot of work and constant work you know it's and t

hat's I think what it is it's like the constant communication and and yeah I think oh sorry go ahead uh briefly on the knowledge trust thing I think um I think that that's something that we do the knowledge part I think that we do encounter at our org and I think that we've kind of addressed this in ways of like um when we rolled in Salesforce like holding like trainings and workshops for explaining the process and the context for why we're using it and how to use the technical tool um I think h

elps generate buyin so I think General context and expressing like you don't have to get into the weeds but like how an analysis is done and showing that transparency I think is helpful for increasing knowledge and buy in um with General data initiatives yeah and and to that point too uh Asha our colleague Asha who does a lot of the work around Salesforce has regular office hours for people to ask questions and like uh it's since I've been there at least there's getting her time to talk and um r

eiterate stuff or what have you at um all staff meetings like we werey trying to create some space for that um real quick I there was a question too about um where did it goes uh about the issue being social I having trouble navigating this chat for some reason yeah I did a little yeah what was that no go ahead um yeah I'm gonna scoot it to our Q&A portion we have we have about a minute left for uh for Q&A here before I dive into a couple extra resources but yeah Christopher Schneider had um tha

nk you Christopher um asked for uh do you have any examples of how you convene multiple stakeholders to address those uh Social Challenges of centering data and michen has a really great uh chat response there thank you Michaela with Chris if there was anything that else that you wanted to add other than building in like regular meeting infrastructure um and uh engaging folks in uh a collaborative analysis process um no I don't I I think I would just say to to reiterate that point of it being ve

ry social it is very social and having an analysis of organizational Dynamics I think is very is important so in terms of like the leadership our supervisor Jose I think is very keen on how organizations work um and how to work within them um so it's I think that's an important aspect of it that it's not just giving people the right ideas but there's a like organizations are very complex things and being able to navigate uh all the technical side of that and emotional side of that and all that k

ind of stuff is an important part of being able to effectively um build up uh yeah the good sort of data environment it sounds like you all talk about talking about data as as as much as you talk about actual data does that sound yes does yes absolutely yeah great okay um I'm going to jump to some just in the interest of time on to some additional resources here uh thank you again to Christen Michin um and uh I'll be sure sure excuse me sure to share this out and I'll share y'all's emails as wel

l so if anyone has any burning questions that have not yet been answered or you haven't had time to type them out um that's okay uh I'll share my email so that you can reach out to me at the end of this Workshop um but I want to send everyone out with some further learning resources for you all these are also all free and publicly available too um don't worry about writing these down I am going to email this out to everybody first and foremost like the DSi is absolutely a resource for you as you

're continuing to do this work so keep an eye on our events and outre pages and sign up for a newsletter sign up for kids for Chicago's newsletter too while you're at it get all the newsletters uh stay in touch stay connected um this data for social impact course um so this is a free self- dant online course from Washington University in St Louis on full disclosure I just finished it and I had a really great experience it's very comprehensive overview of data for social good um and there's a lot

of these like building data culture recommendations um one that I really loved was the idea of a data party which I'm a nerd so I'm like data party that sounds fantastic um but the way they describ data party is really setting aside um a Long Afternoon a few hours um to like chrisen M mentioned bring everyone to the table have those open um collaborative and communication um options and dig into Data analysis work together as a multidisiplinary te which it sounds like you all have done maybe ve

rsions of that um the data.org resource Library so this is full of different types of Articles videos how- toos you can filter by experience level or by topic those are all free to access data.org also has a really fantastic comprehensive guide book on data science for nonprofits specifically for nonprofits and social impact organizations they have a webinar video series they have started some discussion networks for nonprofits um and then data.gov as well um we mentioned in our previous Worksho

p that data.gov is a great resource for um open publicly available data um from you know Federal Municipal and County governments um on everything from you know transit to health to education but it also has some really comprehensive guides and resource documents as well we do have some multiple opportunities for Community Partnerships and Outreach here at DSi as well we have data science Clinic that's teams of students with faculty and staff mentors for kind of larger scale projects with Commun

ity organizations um data for all is an opportunity for high school students to learn about data science skills and careers um applications are closed for the spring but keep an eye for the future similarly summer lab is our um opportunity for undergraduates and summer research programs we also have an industry affiliate program too so um if you're here on this call and you um aren't in a social impact organization but you work with them or you're really interested to learn more we do have colla

boration opportunities for everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies um connecting industry Partners to data science research Technologies and talent AC position and then we have a few different research projects going on right now too uh one you can participate in right now is uh through the internet Equity initiative uh we have a Broadband speed test tool that you can use to help us measure the quality of Internet services and expand Equitable internet access um and again if you're inter

ested check out our website and sign up for our newsletter thank you all so much for coming and participating a huge thank you to our speakers Chris and michen um thank you all for participating today and sharing um your experiences with d dat culture at your at kids for Chicago a couple next steps I am going to send everyone this slide de and that's going to include all the links to all of these resources for you you are also going to get a short survey and that is part of our program evaluatio

n um because we want to be able to measure the impact of these workshops and see what folks like yourselves on the front lines of social impact work are interested in in terms of support learning and Partnerships um this is my email you'll also get it from my email in the our slide deck there so feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions at all and um thank you again to our wonderful speakers thank you for attending