Creating a Data Strategy: Building Staff and Community Capacity

The purpose of this workshop is to strengthen organizational capacity by introducing participants to the components of a data strategy. Generally, community-based organizations have a piecemeal approach to data collection, management, and reporting. The chaos of this approach is not always obvious, but the indicators are abound: inconsistent data, inability to integrate, little accountability, poor evaluation, and failure to receive funding. With a data strategy, staff will be able to optimize solutions to create successful programs. A large staff and/or budget are not necessary to translate data into real power. The presenters will guide participants through a process to evaluate his/her organizations current relationship with data and provide tools to begin to create a data strategy for success. This workshop will be an interactive work session. We will assess organizations current client tracking processes, and illuminate ways in which staff are already data collectors and managers. Participants will gain insight on how to evolve into an organization in which data works with/for them.