Digital Impact was created by the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS and was managed until 2024. It is no longer being updated.
Team
[ess_grid alias=”dataorchard”]
Data Orchard is a research organization providing skills in research, statistics and data with shared passions around making the world a better place socially, economically and environmentally. Data Orchard received a 2017 Digital Impact Grant. Learn more about Data Orchard’s work here.
Project Overview
Data Orchard will develop and test a model of support, and an online self-assessment tool, for accelerating progress on the journey towards data maturity in non-profits. Using an open-published social sector data maturity framework, Data Orchard will develop two complimentary approaches:
- Test Support Model: Take a cohort of organizations on a journey to enable and accelerate progress including measuring data maturity pre/post project, auditing data assets, planning data strategy, and training in impact measurement, data protection, digital tools and culture change
- Online Self-Assessment Tool: Improve and automate prototype questions and scoring tool
Challenge
Data is critical to non-profits’ ongoing operations and future survival. Increasing volumes and sources of digital data are being rapidly generated in every job, team, function, often alongside non-digital paper-based systems. Governing all of this safely, ethically and effectively is one of the sector’s most difficult challenges. Organizations collect and use lots of data, yet its power and potential remains largely untapped. Whilst some are using data to achieve greater impact, efficiency, and influence, most are struggling with more basic problems. In 2016 Data Orchard conducted some ground breaking research on data maturity in the non-profit sector in the UK. Data Orchard defines ‘Data Maturity’ as the organizational journey towards improvement and increased capability in using data. When we talk about data we mean all the types of information an organization collects, stores, analyses and uses. These are the 10 key problematic characteristics of non-profits evidenced by the research:
- Not very data mature
- Small
- Low/No skills capacity
- Poor digital tools
- Leadership disengaged with data
- Low cultural readiness
- GDPR compliance
- Difficulty collecting data
- Lack of services, and unequal access
- Short-term support
Conversations
Madeleine Spinks presented the work of Data Orchard at the Data on Purpose conference at Stanford University in February 2019.