Happy seventh birthday to us
Party on
Yesterday we at Data Orchard CIC celebrated our 7th birthday with a (Zoom enabled) birthday party. We're grateful to all those who came to celebrate with us. Alongside the dancefloor, the craft room, and the networking in the breakout rooms, our co-Chief Executives took a few moments to reflect on the past 7 years and to talk about where we are going next.
Looking back
Our roots in the community
Our mission is to enable organisations to use data for better decisions and greater impact. When we started the social enterprise in 2013, this mission arose out of a passion to help community groups gather and use evidence to plan their neighbourhood’s futures at a time when the public sector was withdrawing support to do so.
Our first client was a community group in the picturesque village of Eardisley. We helped them gather robust evidence for their neighbourhood development plan (NDP), to comply with the rigorous statutory and inspection processes for the spatial plan for their group of parishes, to become enshrined in planning law. We gave advice on consultation and engagement, questionnaire design, and logistics. We analysed the data and wrote reports, which were then used by our expert planner associate (Bill). He helped the group draft planning policies, which have now become part of statutory planning guidance.
We have now helped 50 such communities (and benefitted from some fantastic management wisdom from two members of Eardisley NDP group since then - one of whom is now the chair of our board, Nancy).
Growing in scale
Over the next few years we began to take on more strategic and complex projects. For example we:
evaluated a Youth Social Action programme for the Cabinet Office
conducted research to understand domestic violence and abuse in minority communities (pulling together data from multiple partners, and undertaking interviews with survivors) This culminated with a Silent Victims conference convened to discuss the findings with front-line workers from a range of agencies. A real example of research into action.
assessed digital skills among members of the public
reviewed the impact of tech support to women in business.
We were increasingly interested in how organisations could be supported to make better use of data. And in 2016 we began our national research into data maturity in the social sector with DataKind UK.
Armed with our fully researched and tested data maturity framework we began to offer direct support to social sector organisations on becoming data savvy. In 2018 in partnership with 9 organisations, we ran the UK's first national Data4Good conference for the social sector in Birmingham.
2019 began with a presentation on our data maturity project to the 'Navigating the Digital Now' conference at Stanford University in San Francisco, and in October we launched our data maturity assessment tool which now has 350 users. This is free to use with additional services available on a paid-for basis.
This year we have continued our wide range of data projects:
we worked with emh group to review and improve the quality of their equality and diversity data
we supported Valleys to Coast Housing in Wales to develop their first data strategy, and
we've analysed data from multiple national organisations on the impact of COVID-19
we’ve begun an Impact Measurement capacity building project with Liverpool Lighthouse
This year we've worked for local authorities, central government departments and charities large and small but we have not forgotten our community roots, as evidenced by some recent story mapping work for a community group in Telford about the "Cinderloo miner's uprising”.
Looking forward
Goals
It's a strange time to be planning with so much uncertainty in the world. We have spent some time across the summer looking back at where we have had the biggest impact, the problems shared across the social sector and how best we can deliver our mission.
We've decided to focus down on four goals for the next three years.
Extend our unique online data maturity assessment and benchmarking tool for the not-for-profit sector
We're proud of our data maturity framework and the assessment tool. Organisations tell us it is a really useful tool to help them understand where they are, initiate dialogue with leaders and colleagues, develop strategies and plans for investment, and to measure their progress. We're particularly proud of the fact that the assessment tool is free to use. Small charities should find this is all they need. For larger organisations we will continue to develop our paid for customisable version so that it provides excellent value for a more bespoke service.
We are also developing and testing a new offer for other capacity builder organisations (support organisations, infrastructure bodies, and funders) who want to conduct data maturity assessments and benchmarking for a cohort of charities, a network, or group of members.
Focus on building data capabilities in the charity, housing, and public sectors
We already have a track record in this area and know organisations in these sectors are increasingly recognising data as a strategic asset, that affects performance across the organisation. Our understanding of data maturity really helps us to help other organisations with tailored interventions.
We’ll be focusing on the service areas where we have knowledge and expertise:
Data Maturity Assessment
Data Strategy
Impact Measurement
Equality and Diversity Data Audits
Community Mapping
We already work across Wales and in England and we understand the context in those two nations very well. We're committed to Wales and England (especially the Midlands of England) for the long term but we will be looking to expand our work across the UK and across the world.
We've found that working in partnership with organisations that share our values and mission has been very effective and we will be looking to strengthen our existing partnerships and develop new relationships.
Develop and promote new services and products
We won't stand still. We will continue to invest time and resource in developing and testing new services and products available online. This will make it easier for us to reach, inspire and support more leaders and data champions to help their organisations become more data savvy.
Strengthen our board, our team and the data4good community more widely
An effective, diverse and committed board is critical to our success. We are recruiting new board members right now, and we will continue to ensure that people who share our mission and have the appropriate skills are able to join our board. We will continue to invest in developing the skills of our existing team and in expanding our team.
We have always been committed to flexible working practices but from this point forward the Internet will be our office. Though we will retain a small physical base in Herefordshire our team will be able to work from anywhere.
We will also develop projects on our own and with others to make sure that charity, housing and public sectors have access to the data skills that they need, that data professionals see those sectors as areas they can pursue their careers and that data professionals within those sectors are able to support each other.
We have already provided work experience opportunities to a few young people (now in jobs or university). Given the economic recession and entrenched inequality in society which disadvantages some more than others, we plan to create more opportunities for young and diverse people to enter data/non-profit careers.
Work with us
We've come a long way in 7 years by being focused on our mission and staying true to our values. We expect to be able to have a huge impact in the next 7 years but we won't be able to do that alone. We want to work with others. So whether you think our services could help you, want to develop a partnership with us or think you could contribute to our team... please get in touch.