A brief history of Data Orchard and data maturity

People often ask us how Data Orchard came about and how we came to develop our Data Maturity Assessment tool, so we thought we’d write a blog to tell our story.

2010 – The epiphany

In 2010 there was massive media attention and excitement about BIG data and OPEN data. Our late hero, Hans Rosling, was delivering TED talks with pioneering interactive data visualisations on global health and economic inequalities. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation was publishing incredibly accessible and powerful analysis on UK poverty in the national press. This was an ‘epiphany moment’ when we suddenly realised we could change the world if we could harness the power of data. If we (as a society) could better understand the shared problems we could collaborate and find better, faster, more sustainable solutions.

2013 – Creation of Data Orchard

Data Orchard was set up by a group of eight people with skills in data, research and statistics, and years of experience working in charities, public sector and community development. We shared a passion about how data could help make the world a better place socially, economically and environmentally. Both at a local level and globally.

We weren’t the only ones either. There were other non-profit visionaries around at that time too, giving us momentum and a sense being part of a wider ‘Data4Good’ cause, including:

• Open Data Institute (established 2012)

• NPC Justice Data Lab (pilot launched 2013)

• DataKind UK (established 2013)

• The Operational Research Society Pro-bono Scheme (launched 2013)

2015 – Initial research on data maturity models

In 2015 we partnered with DataKind UK and began researching data maturity models with a view to finding one suitable for the not-for-profit sector. We found hundreds of them! However, they were almost all focused on the commercial sector. They were also primarily aimed at fairly technical audiences in analytics teams in huge enterprises, and the language and context didn’t translate to the not-for-profit sector. (Here’s our Review of Data Maturity Models published in early 2016.) So, we realised we had to create our own…

2016 – National research on data in the not-for-profit sector

Like any decent non-profit driven to make change, we knew we had to start by developing a detailed understanding of the problem and need. We proposed a national survey of charities and social enterprises. Since we had statisticians on our team we agreed a target of 2,000 organisations would provide a representative sector sample.

Six weeks after launching the survey and promoting it via infrastructure organisations and networks all over the UK, we had 150 respondents. Crawling and begging we managed to get 200 charities and social enterprises to respond. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to get a sense of the challenges and identify a diverse set of organisations to allow us to explore data maturity in more depth. We did in-depth organisation-wide interviews and looked under the bonnet at what was happening in 12 very different organisations. We also organised some fun workshops with all kinds of charities to talk about data maturity and test some of our thinking.

2017 – First report on data in the sector and first Data Maturity Framework

In January 2017 Data Orchard and DataKind UK published our Data Evolution Report with the findings of our national research on data maturity. We found data was an integral part of life in charities and social enterprises. It was critical to their survival. They collect and use lots of it. But its power remains largely untapped.

We also published our first Data Maturity Framework for the social sector – setting out our model of seven key themes along a five stage journey. As a document it was essentially a theoretical descriptor of each stage for each theme. We got lots of positive feedback and some organisations said it was really useful : NCVO, The International Red Cross, Parkinsonson’s UK.

However, a theoretical framework isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Others came back to us and said, “...that’s all very well but what questions should we be asking ourselves?”

And we, having created a set of questions and a prototype of how to score and benchmark data maturity, were very excited about the possibility of being able to do this remotely, online.

So with the help of a grant from the Digital Impact programme at Stanford University, and later the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, we were able to research and develop an assessment tool to measure data maturity.

2018 – First UK Data4Good Conference

In 2018, we initiated the Data4Good partnership of ten not-for-profit organisations with a shared interest in building the data capabilities of our sector. Together we organised the first national Data4Good Conference. Actually, we’d envisaged it as the launch of our online assessment tool, but we were still busy researching and testing. Still, it gave us an opportunity to share our findings and test the interest, of which there was lots.

Indeed it was nearly a whole year, with lots of user testing (thanks also to the Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST)) before we were actually ready to launch the tool.

2019 – Launch first free online data maturity assessment tool for not-for-profit organisations

In October 2019 we soft launched Data Orchard’s free online Data Maturity Assessment Tool, along with a revised version of the data maturity framework (version 2). That December we conducted our first round of analysis and began what’s become an ongoing iterative process of product improvement for our online tool. We launched on version 17 and are now on version 22!

2020 – Launch of customisable whole organisation data maturity assessment

In March 2020 we were able to fulfil our ambition to create a more sophisticated version of the assessment. One that was customisable and aimed at enabling multiple people in an organisation to participate in the assessment process. You can see all our Data Maturity Assessment options here.

2020 – Research to understand the impact of our Data Maturity Assessment Tool

In November 2020, a year after we’d launched our free tool, and with over 600 unique users, we conducted our first impact review. We were delighted to find evidence that the Data Maturity Assessment Tool was bringing benefits both as a tool for learning and a catalyst for action to improve. You can read the impact report here.

2021 – First ‘State of the Sector’ report into data maturity in the not-for-profit sector

And so finally, in July 2021 (after some months of data cleaning and validation, a lot of coding and analysis, and several draft reports) we published our first report sharing what the data says about data maturity in the sector. State of the Sector - Data Maturity in the Not-for-Profit Sector 2020 is the first report of its kind, presenting our analysis of the data from the use of the tool in its first 15 months (October 2019 - December 2020). We also wrote a short blog post about our 10 key findings.