Community-Based Organizations: The Importance of Understanding Data

Community-based organizations (CBOs) work at the local level to improve the quality of life of its community members. CBOs focus on addressing problems such as working with marginalized youth and families, increasing social and emotional wellbeing, or educating the community about certain public health concerns. That is why CBOs are at the frontline of program development and innovation.

Regardless of a CBO's specialization, they gather large amounts of information that is mostly unused. Aside from demographics and performance targets identified by funders, most data collected by CBOs is amassed and stored in large physical and digital depositories where information lays dormant, undervalued and underutilized. CBOs are perfectly positioned to inform the creation of evidence-based practices and programs tailored to the cultural makeup of the community they serve.

Treatment plans, progress notes, and assessments are just some of the many forms commonly used to collect data. These are used to track progress but also to better understand treatment effects at the individual level. The individual data informs direct service workers' next steps. It also gives supervisors and managers a good idea of what their workers are doing, how to help them develop and how to best support them and their work. Now imagine having the ability to analyze the data for the 1,350 community members that received services at your CBO last year.

Aggregated data (the compilation of the treatment plans, progress notes, and assessments of the 1,350 community members your CBO saw last year) tells us about trends and tendencies. It gives us a better idea of what works and what does not. What you find might surprise you. There may be an effective intervention strategy that works for a particular group or subgroup. Now you can hone in on that strategy and replicate it. Maybe you can get it funded as an innovation.

Aggregated data can also help you manage and support staff. You will be better able to target productivity. Staff-related decisions can be made more deliberate with the use of the data already being collected at your organization.

Why would you want to blindly try ideas when you have all the data you need at your disposal to make sound treatment, programmatic and management decisions? The most common answer is "I don't know how." or "I can't. I don't have the time to analyze this data." This is understandable. You, as the leader of the organization, cannot do it all.

That is why you build your team, investing primarily in the people who do the work and on the people who can analyze the work for you. Adding a data specialist position may be a challenge but there are always opportunities for funding and prioritizing these positions. Maybe a full-time position is not possible right now. Maybe you have a small amount of money to hire a consultant for a few months. Maybe you already have someone on staff with a natural inclination for data analysis and reporting- this is the route I took due to budget restrictions. With support and training, @kameya-p-leung has been invaluable to the growth of our department.

Whether you choose to hire externally, promote internally, or do it yourself, taking the time to understand what your data is saying is an investment in the overall health of your organization.

Published on Linkedin.