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Transformative change can happen when we engage in more equitable and inclusive data practices, and it
requires consistent attention to how we approach our work. I’d love to say our team is equitable in our evaluation practices, but in truth, it’s an ongoing practice we will all continue to strive for as long as we do our work. The barriers are big, and behavior change is slow.
We often work with clients to help them build a learning practice (which is a process to test our thinking, increase our knowledge and improve results over time). Recently, we were in a conversation that was focused, not for the first time, on who a client was naming as their stakeholders. Typically, in a learning practice the organization sponsoring it considers their internal staff as primary stakeholders. This is reasonable, of course, as they are working to improve their programs and strategies, and
internal staff must learn from data to make informed changes. But often when we raise the question as to whether nonprofit staff, community members and program participants are stakeholders in learning and improvement, we are met with disinterest at best, and resistance at worst.
I left this conversation uneasy – the pathway to influencing who this client might consider a stakeholder was unclear. After this conversation, I happened to read "Measuring Is an Act of Power"*** - a recent Nonprofit Quarterly article - which calls attention to power in the process of evaluation, and the beliefs and practices that can undermine whether evaluation work is equitable. Reading this article was timely and reinforced my unease. It solidified, in my mind, our responsibility to ensure that the
voices of those impacted by strategies and programs are at the table when deciding what questions to ask, what data to collect, how to collect it and who engages in sense-making and action.
Measuring as an act of power is a real thing and engaging in evaluative practice can be transformational for individuals and organizations when done equitably.
Have you faced a time in your data practice that challenged your responsibility to ensure equity? If so, and you're willing to share your experience, I’d love to hear from you so we might collaborate to address this and influence the sector.
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TOOLS- Equitable Evaluation Framework: Guiding principles we can all follow, and the traditionally held beliefs we should all be aware of.
- Redefining what we mean by “Learning Agenda”: Taking a layered approach to a learning agenda, creating “a learning ecosystem with a shared line of sight — actors at each level addressing the questions they are best able to address, in a way that rolls up to a larger body of knowledge.”
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HOW CAN WE HELP YOU USE DATA TO DRIVE LEARNING AND ACTION?- Impact Manager is for nonprofits who are short on resources, and struggling to keep up with their data practice. One of our consultants serve as an extension of your team, so you don’t have to worry about hiring, training or payroll.
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ResultsLab is a woman-owned social enterprise that propels organizations, communities, and networks to the next level of impact through quality design and effective use of data. We are reinventing impact
management by providing strategic design and capacity building for data informed decision-making to organizations and networks that exist to drive change for our communities.
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