Data Skills in nonprofits - a discussion

Discussing data skills

We run online workshops every month aimed at data folk in nonprofits. These workshops aim to bring people together to discuss matters of common concern and to share their experiences. 

As one participant has said:

"Interesting topics and people, leading to interesting conversations. It's really useful to have a place where these issues can be discussed with other people"

In June we asked people to work on the greatest data strategy ever.

For our September workshop, we invited people to bring and share their experiences and perspectives around data skills. We put people into breakout rooms and asked them to take notes of the discussion.

To kick off the conversations, we posed three broad questions. This post summarises the discussions and ideas the three questions led to...

How do you know what skills your organisation has / what it is lacking? 

Many people agreed it is hard to understand data skills across organisations. Some of the views and learning expressed by the group included:

The nature of data skills is complex. One role might need something specific, like SQL, whereas another might need critical thinking. It is important to understand the context and make sure that the organisation can access a wide range of skills (like external people who do pro bono work).  

Undertaking a skills audit is a good idea. This was the general view, though most of the group felt it can be practically hard to get going. One attendee talked about an organisation with 700 staff and one data person. They are developing a skills audit, but are not sure what tools are available. Also, it was pointed out that if you ask “do you want training”, normally people will say yes. 

You’re going to need a template or framework. You could design your own, but how can you be sure of the skills you could have? Data people themselves come from different backgrounds and so might not know so much about the skills needed in other aspects of data and analysis.

A well designed skills audit is good for encouraging participation. It can also be used as a basis/starting point for conversations between individuals and their line managers. It is important to keep the focus on what you want to do with the data, rather than on the data itself.

Try to make it light/fun when asking questions about data. A lot of people can be scared of the word data and it can be difficult for people to admit that they may not be ‘data literate’. The voice of experience suggested you should try to keep the conversations as lighthearted as possible.

Frameworks people had used to assess where their organisation is in terms of data skills included the Data Orchard Data Maturity Framework. Even simple measures like “what three words occur to you when you think about data?” can be very telling. ODI has a data skills framework which several people cited.

Comparing one organisation to others is something there’s a real appetite for, according to our discussions.

What are good or interesting ways to develop data skills in nonprofits?

Doing the hard work to make it simple

There’s a balance to be struck between developing skills internally and recruiting external support. It’s not a choice between the two, it depends on what is needed.

Data teams are different to the whole organisation and require different approaches. That said, analysts can act as an advice centre and can identify emerging training needs across the organisation. Data teams can also do the hard work, to make it easy for their colleagues to analyse their own data.

Use something to reel people in. Create a tool that allows someone to use something, that they would then want to learn how to edit/create themselves.

Dashboards are not the whole solution, though you certainly should develop interactive dashboards so that staff can look at data, ask questions and then answer the questions themselves. 

How to get people to think about the questions is tricky. You might have PowerBI but don’t expect people to connect the data and create the data model themselves. 

Look at what frontline staff need in order to do their job better where data is concerned. Help understand the impact of how data is captured on data quality.

Create a community

Create a community in your organisation to encourage discussion and debate about an issue - explain what the problem is and then create a training session that meets that need.

Push people to try new ways of doing things, so that they can avoid arduous, manual ways of doing things.

Encourage sharing (of code, of methodology, of solutions) that others can learn from. Try internal hackathons. The Advent of Code can be fun (and doesn’t require laborious data skills).

It’s not just training

Training courses are not enough and can be too abstract. Make things relevant and give sufficient context. We learn by doing. Use a ‘home’ database to allow things to sink in. 

If people don’t use skills immediately then it can be forgotten. This relates to the resources that come with the training and doing the work after. Link training to changes in tools, dashboards or systems, so that people have the skills to use the new data.

It’s hard to provide good quality general training that will work for everyone because people have different skills and different roles require different skills. Instead / as well, give people opportunities to work on projects that use data skills. There‘s a balance between having enough skill and working on something manageable.

Show people exciting ways of doing stuff with data, particularly in the area they work in to make it relevant. It’s important to know your audience. 

Good partnerships provide good learning. In contrast, when professionals come in on shorter term assignments, but don’t also help upskill the permanent team, this is less helpful. 

What else should we consider?

Organisations need data literacy across all levels, including management.

Proper resourcing is needed, and organisations should avoid disruptive re-structuring within teams. Data champions need to be able to communicate the specific benefits of data, both previous and anticipated, but it’s difficult to do this work if staff have no capacity/time to think about data.

Make your organisation a good place to work for data folk. Retaining and recruiting staff can be a challenge - we can’t offer the salaries to compete against the private sector. On the other hand, the work is interesting and engaging compared to a private sector/commercial organisation. Consider offering development opportunities from within an organisation and/or data apprenticeships for existing members of staff.

For smaller charities, specialist skills can be a challenge. The size of the organisation can affect the justification for resourcing. As well as this, smaller charities have smaller amounts of data: less to play with and less exciting, compared with the challenges and development opportunities of a large organisation. This might make them less attractive to, for example, a data scientist. In small charities you often have one person having to cover a lot of bases. This affects the capacity to deliver all that we need them to do, and it’s often harder to develop a deeper understanding.

But! If you can understand your data and its value, there is an opportunity for it to amplify your voice. With better understanding of data, there is an opportunity to use it for greater reward. As well as this, better data skills and tools can make you more efficient: time is not wasted on collecting and analysing data that is not needed.

Incorrect analysis can become a liability. This is a concern for some, but, on the other hand, people can be too conscious about this and shy away from sharing, which is also a threat. Open-source platforms and tools enable complex analysis with lower skill requirements.

Resources

data basic.io provides fun content. Some used the to help people gain confidence around data.

Technical intuition is important. Everyone should have an understanding of this possibly - here’s a blog about it.

This thought piece about how to develop data leadership might be helpful.

The UK Government has a capability framework for data job families.

What's next?

Attendees at the workshop have access to the worksheet for their own purposes and I've given you a summary of the discussions here.

We also have a Slack team where people can continue the conversation.

Join us for our next workshop

We'll be holding the next workshop on 13th October at 13:00 UK time (UTC+1).

The focus for this will be data culture in nonprofits. We’ll ask people to share their own knowledge and experiences around changing and supporting data culture.

This is a topic we uncovered lots of interesting insights on, in our latest report, State of the Sector - Data Maturity in the Not-For-Profit Sector, so we’re expecting a lively discussion!