Learning What Works

In April 2021, Measure of America and Nonprofit New York began planning the second Learning What Works (LWW) program, a free, nine-month technical assistance initiative. The program is designed to increase nonprofit leaders’ capacity to use data for setting goals, defining programming needs, evaluating progress, and communicating their results. The program furthers a core Measure of America commitment: democratizing data by making it easy to access and use. Building on the positive results and lessons learned from our pilot program in 2019–2020, we updated the content for the second LWW cohort to best meet the participants’ needs during the pandemic and beyond. For example, the second LWW program was completely virtual, with a mix of interactive online sessions, peer-learning opportunities, office hours, and on-demand webinars. In addition, to make our program accessible for all participants all programming was offered with ASL interpretation.

2022 LWW Cohort. Some participants not pictured.

To kick-off last year's program, Measure of America and Nonprofit New York presented a complementary webinar for all New York City Nonprofit leaders in June 2021. During the webinar, we shared tools and resources to visualize data for effective storytelling and were joined by a participant from our first LWW cohort, Hager Shawkat, Program Director for the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Families. Hager reflected on her key takeaways from the LWW program, shared how her team is using data more routinely, and highlighted the infographic project she developed in the program.

We also offered a second complementary webinar, Introduction to Data Management Tools, in fall 2021 with MOA’s partner The Movement Cooperative. Over 60 percent of the second LWW cohort reported that selecting or developing information management tools was a data challenge that they were working on last year. Nonprofit leaders, including LWW participants from our first cohort, participated in the interactive live session, and over 75 individuals downloaded the recorded webinar session.

Thirty-two leaders from sixteen NYC nonprofits were accepted into the program. The leaders were fully engaged and committed throughout, and every organization that started the program successfully completed it. Individuals who were not accepted into the program were invited to MOA’s Data Clinic session. The MOA Data Clinic hosted a small, motivated, and engaged group of nonprofit leaders from across the City. This special session explored data resources and provided strategies on how to leverage data in programs and communications to drive change and community engagement. A great result was seeing participants create connections and make plans to reconnect with other data clinic participants.

Lessons/Insights from this Program

Facilitating the LWW program continues to provide valuable insights about how to most effectively address the needs of nonprofit leaders committed to enhancing their data capacity.

Capturing feedback in real-time is very helpful in tailoring content to meet the evolving needs of nonprofit leaders. Although the majority of LWW program is well established, we are able to adjust the format, resources, and in some cases, add additional content to the program as needed. Following every session, LWW participants were given the opportunity to share feedback, and we were able to offer additional content in response to requests in real time.

A clear, recurring recommendation in the program evaluations from our second LWW cohort is the need for more opportunities to practice new skills and use the new resources presented between sessions. Although we already require participants to identify a data project to work on during the program, we will develop additional hands-on activities/assignments to help participants solidify their new skills.

We also recognize the importance of creating opportunities for peer sharing. One respondent said in their program evaluation, “Pairing programs that are working on similar projects or that are similar places in their data journey would be helpful.” One of the most effective ways for nonprofit leaders to learn about data resources is to see them in action from their peers.

Hager Shawkat, Program Director for the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Families

Presentation by Sauti Yetu Center

The Measure of America team and ASL interpreter

A deep dive on data visualization presentation

Below are a few anonymous comments provided by Learning What Works second cohort participants when they filled out our program evaluation:

“Length of sessions and guest speakers were great.”

“Really appreciated the office hours that were set up, shoutout to Vikki and Laura for all the helpful tips. Helped inform us of what we were facing.”

“The sessions were never too much; they were just enough. The social aspect was really nice, everyone was helpful [like in] the breakout groups.”

“I don’t have a lot of bandwidth since I wear many hats with my organization…using the actual tools during the session was really helpful.”

“It exceeded my expectations.”

Data Project Highlights

Examples of data projects from the 2021–2022 second LWW cohort program:

New York Immigrant Coalition (NYIC)

NYIC tracks the resources their organization distributes to community members throughout New York City. With smart data collection as an organizational priority, NYIC's cohort members entered the LWW program with the intention of demonstrating their short-term and long-term impact. Using data visualization tools offered and demonstrated during the LWW program, NYIC cohort members were able to better understand their outreach efforts over time.

Dancewave

LWW cohort members worked on highlighting Dancewave's residency program as a city-wide organization through a map visualization. By using data visualization tools, Dancewave has been able to produce clear and simplified ways to demonstrate their impact across New York City.

Dancewave's residency map was made using Datawrapper during LWW.

Arab-American Family Center

Cohort members worked on revamping their intake data spreadsheet used to track client cases and associated tasks completed by staff. With the aim of getting a snapshot of the data from each month of intakes, cohort members used PivotTables and other tools to better understand and assess the data their organization collects. By using these tools, cohort members were also able to update staff on organizational progress.

New York City Employment and Training Coalition (NYCETC)

NYCETC designed a strategic survey that was informed by past survey data to better understand their organization's outreach and improve previous survey formats. Cohort members revamped and updated their use of surveys based on lessons in the LWW program.

Measure of America and Nonprofit New York are excited to continue to expand the LWW program and engage new partners.

A big thank you to the 2021–2022 Learning What Works Cohort, all of our guest speakers for lending their expertise to our program and community of practice, the team at Nonprofit New York, and our partners at The New York Community Trust for their continued support.