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What’s more valuable, though, is my work in non-profits. I’ve held roles that include delivering frontline services, doing everything in a grassroots org, board leadership, and consulting. As an evaluator using engagement as a key tool, I get to understand the perspectives of participants, staff, and leadership. It gives me a really nuanced perspective into what the challenges and opportunities are within organizations. I started working in evaluation and organizational learning because I saw way too many organizations collecting data for accountability to funders and never looking at it again. Collecting, preparing, and reporting on data takes a lot of time. Sometimes organizations don’t use it because it’s not relevant to their learning. More often, they don’t know how to transpose it to be useful for improvement and development. I love helping organizations find ways to use the data they’re already collecting. One really simple opportunity is to create a shared document or file, and invite your staff to track ‘a-ha’ moments as they’re preparing funder reports. You can use these for annual reporting, bring them into staff meetings, and have them at your fingertips for program design and funding applications. I’ll talk more about the best webinar I’ve ever attended another time, but in it, Junious WIlliams reminds us that we’re collecting the data anyway, we might as well use it.
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