Senior Analysts Blog About Analysis Group’s Data-Driven Pro Bono Work with Social Innovation Forum
August 12, 2020
The end goal of many nonprofits is to help people – and, according to Senior Analysts Natalie Fox and Natalie Bina, data can help such organizations do so faster and with greater impact. In a blog post about a Social Innovation Forum (SIF) event, “Evaluating Progress for Continuous Learning: Lessons Learned from Our 2018 Innovators,” Ms. Fox and Ms. Bina offer examples of how several nonprofits under the SIF umbrella improved performance measurement and other metrics in two years’ time, thanks in part to Analysis Group’s pro bono work with them.
The authors focus on four takeaways: the importance of using both internal and external data, as demonstrated by Fathers’ Uplift; the need for organizations to remain flexible and patient when pivoting to meet changing community needs, as GreenRoots did; the usefulness of surveys to help demonstrate non-numeric impacts in a compelling way, as shown by Strategies for Youth; and the power of personal stories to give data context and weight, as discussed by the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project. Analysis Group has worked with Fathers’ Uplift, Strategies for Youth, and PAIR.