Insight Infrastructure Chronicles: How Charities Can Use Their Data To Drive Change
The concept
Since April 2023 we have been working closely with Data For Action and a variety of charities and civil society organisations from across the UK. Together we have been exploring whether the data they collect could provide insights and help answer questions beyond monitoring and evaluation (M&E) purposes.
Our intent was to see if this data could help us quickly understand what people need, what services they use, and who is asking for help, with the additional caveat that this is a continuous source of near to real-time information as it is regularly collected by charitable organisations. In other words, we’ve been researching the possibility of creating an observatory into the socio-demographic circumstances and characteristics of those in need of charitable organisations’ intervention.
Why, you might ask? It is undeniable that charitable organisations constitute one of the most crucial keystones of our society. They are more than a safety net or last resort, often filling a dangerous vacuum that, if unattended, would rapidly increase the spread of injustice and inequality. Charities have eyes and ears closer to the ground than any other sector and, collectively, could provide new and timely perspectives on poverty and inequality in our communities.
There are, however, many barriers that have been preventing charities from implementing novel ways in which they could use the data they collect. But let’s take a look at some numbers first, and why we believe this could be an opportunity worth investing in.
Fig.1 — Proportion of poverty relief charities in the UK by nation
This is probably far from the actual number of charitable organisations working on poverty and related issues, but provides a sense of the proportion of the sector that share JRF’s mission. What this means is that, if we had to include any other organisations that deal with poverty, directly or indirectly, the number of data contributors and users would be even higher, thus, supporting the case for the exponential impact a poverty observatory could have.
What stakeholders say — In addition to its potential, why might charities want to consider joining this initiative? We have explored this and other questions with several charities and third sector organisations who have been kind enough to help us see if our idea could work. Collectively, we have identified a series of barriers and opportunities:
1) A resource for data contributors and the whole sector: I mentioned barriers. The vast majority of the charitable sector in the UK is made up of small to medium organisations (i.e., a range including organisations with an income of less than £10k up to £1m — see NCVO almanac for further details).
Fig.2 — Proportion of UK charities by size (all charities vs poverty relief only)
Small organisations often don’t have human and financial resources, and technical assets, to perform both data collection and analysis beyond M&E and funder reporting purposes. But what if they had free access to a digital infrastructure that could streamline a time-consuming and often laborious process? And what if the data collected by every one of those organisations fed into an anonymised and aggregated dataset providing a new and extensive picture of poverty in the country?
Considering how many small charities there are out there, we are looking at a significant number of organisations that would benefit from such infrastructure and could contribute, no matter how big or small, to building that timely picture we currently lack. Sharing data can help others see what people need the most and which communities are most affected. It can also help us find new problems and important areas to keep an eye on.
2) Focus on people: The ideal insight infrastructure should support those seeking charitable aid as much as those providing it. At its core, it should always be a tool for and not just about the people.
Let’s say you work for a small charity. Data is manually inputted into a spreadsheet, whenever you have time to do it as you are constantly juggling with tons of conflicting priorities: reporting to executive, trustees, and funders; thinking about new campaigns and fundraising strategies; dealing with a constant flow of applications for support and referrals. You have data that your organisation collect but little if no time to do much with — it takes ages to update records in the first place, let alone getting your colleagues on board and using it. As it stands, data is actually a burden not an asset. Your data maturity journey feels long and uphill.
Let’s look at another example. You work for a major charity. There’s one analyst, or more if you’re lucky, monitoring and evaluating the data; your policy folks have the information needed to their jobs, and so do other parts of the organisations. Your funders are happy with the impact reports you provide them with. Your data is serving multiple purposes well, it relies on a robust human and technical infrastructure, yet you’re left wondering whether you could do more with. Perhaps, you also wonder what similar organisations are doing and how you could help each other. Or, if you’re a bit like me, you keep thinking about the fact that poverty is still all around you despite all the good charitable work that’s happening because collaborations are often hindered by short-term objectives and one-off partnerships. Plus, you too struggle with limited resources, time and too many conflicting priorities.
Those two very different charities could be both suited to join our initiative. We’re not asking them to ditch tools and processes in favour of a brand new one, or to share everything they collect, but rather to join a long-term project powered by ‘small data’ that we are committed to facilitate and sustain. More on the actual tool and initiative later.
3) Minimum viable data standards: Inconsistency in standards and data gathering skills are other barriers that came up quite strongly. The need for a clear and shared set of standards in data collection has been at the centre of many conversations in the charitable sector for quite some time. The way we have tried to solve this problem might be why we haven’t found an answer yet. The one size fits all approach does not work when applied to large variety of indicators collected by organisations who have different missions, target beneficiaries, skills and resources.
Have we been trying to do too much too quickly in the past? Possibly. The alternative? We focus on fewer indicators instead, and implement a minimum set of data standards that are viable and actionable. What indicators? Location, socio-demographic and need data that most organisations are likely to collect; whether it is services, advice or grants they’re providing to people in need across the country.
This might feel like we are underplaying the need for data standards across the whole range of information charities collect. However, in the years I’ve worked in the charitable sector, I have seen plenty of examples on how even data that is meant to be quite uniform and straightforward, is systematically collected in different ways. Take ethnicity as an example. What could potentially be a very simple information to gather, is often inconsistent and divisive to say the least. Therefore, we should be focusing on fewer indicators to begin with. Firstly, because it will be easier on those contributing their data; secondly, because we are more likely to succeed in adopting a shared set of standards if we’re looking at a small number of data points. Lastly, we could (and plan to) use technology to help data contributors to check that their data is in the right shape.
Link with other infrastructure work
In the last couple of years, we have been learning and trying new things. This helped us create some new tools and test different kinds of data. Despite being designed as standalone pieces of work in their first iterations, these individual parts are not meant to exist in isolation. Using a food analogy, we have invested time in sourcing and trialling the best ingredients for our insight recipe book. Those ingredients will realise their true full potential once combined.
Take the work we’ve been doing on experiential insights as an example (i.e., our Grounded Voices programme; Social Media listening and Grassroots Poverty Action Group). Service providers and decision-makers might be interested in qualitative insights only, hence, refer to lived experience to inform their front-line work or policy recommendations. They might also be interested in combining those insights with the latest on income volatility (see Income Volatility Dashboard). Or they might take all of the above and cross-reference against data collected by poverty relief charities, administrative datasets or both.
Another crucial aspects to consider is that those ‘ingredients’ will be as ‘fresh’ as they can be (in our case, the closest it can get to real-time) by the time intended users want to combine multiple sources to understand what’s happening in the country and act accordingly.
Lastly, as the key intentions underpinning our insight infrastructure are to: 1) democratise access to and better use of data and evidence; and 2) fill gaps in data — unlocking the untapped potential of data collected by charities speak loudly and clearly to this intention.
Next steps — Deploying a working prototype
Now that we have spent months working with third sector organisations to come up with a plan and identify what they need to be able to take action, the next step is to put to the test a working prototype with a small number of charities. More specifically, those providing services, support or grants directly to individuals in need. This will enable us to scope the potential for it to be rolled out at a larger scale. The prototype will essentially consist of two parts:
• A private dashboard: where users uploading their own data can assess their data through an automated ‘data checklist’ (e.g., right format, no typos; has no identifiable information); and can generate instantly a series of visualisations they can download, share, use for meetings, reports, fundraising and more.
• A public dashboard: this will be entirely optional with users deciding to opt in or not, though we will strongly encourage charities to consider participating.
We are proposing to start with a small number of data points; information that everyone collects as part of their core activities: socio-demographic data, such as gender, ethnicity, location, alongside the type of need or reasons why current and potential beneficiaries reach out for support in the first place.
To learn more about this project, access existing resources or find out more about how you could contribute to next steps, please visit this website; or reach out directly to myself at Rosario.Piazza@jrf.org.uk or my colleague Adel.Schofield@jrf.org.uk
