Giving Compass' Take:

· In order to make an informed decision, individuals rely on data. Here, Nicola Pritchard shares advice from panel members at a recent NPC seminar about what impact data trustees should be using when making decision about their charities.  

· How is data used as a tool for making decisions? What makes certain data relevant? What information is needed to make decision for a whole charity? 

· Here's more on decision making at nonprofits. 

Sarah Anderson MBE, CEO and trustee of The Listening Place—You need a team
Often in an organisation there’s no paid staff and no budget for data and measurement. Sometimes there isn’t even a recognised measure of the thing you are trying to capture. So how do you know what data you need?

Sarah’s approach was to put a strong advisory team together, featuring people with evaluation expertise. Together they picked people’s brains—calling on experts across the field (in this case, psychology) to help create meaningful measures.

Sarah stressed the importance of understanding that you might not get it right the first time. They went through many iterations, and the more they consulted with their volunteers the more they were able to refine their own way of doing things.  Having a board impact champion (in their case, a clinician) was very important.

Mike Parker, Chair of Street League—Ambitions about goals, and honesty about failures
Mike brought the perspective of a charity that has used information to learn, improve, and scale at a significant pace—growing from being in just two cities in 2010 to 14 today. Street League has built a reputation for its impact practice, and specifically for its transparency about what is and isn’t working through their interactive dashboard.

Read the full article about using impact data for decision making by Nicola Pritchard at NPC.