Connecting Evidence

Did you attend the Collective Impact Action Summit this year? I was excited to attend to see all the examples of good work being done. People shared the sorts of data they are collecting and how they are using those data. They also shared a lot of resources and tools. In this video, I highlight some of my major takeaways. https://lnkd.in/gKhvsGFY Here’s an overview: 1. There are so many ways to use data 2. You can be strategic about the indicators you select 3. Gather data about the various levels of your initiative 4. Close the loop. Make sure that your participants get to see the findings. Encourage them to use data too. 5. Relationships are important because the important work is done through collaboration. 6. Engage the community throughout. 7. You can be creative when it comes to data collection. 8. Check out some of the free tools that are out there. If you attended the conference: What were your major takeaways? If you didn’t: What resonated with you from my summary?

Want to map your community? Here are a couple of tools you can use: ?? Kumu: https://kumu.io/ ?? Node XL: https://nodexl.com/ Those tools may require some know-how, time, and likely a survey to clarify who is connected to who. Another option is to gather coalition members and map your community by hand. Holley (2013) offers a few activities that can enable you to do this. Namely, asking network or coalition members to document the network as they know it. Creating the map itself is not the ultimate goal. The aim is to reflect on the map and identify strengths to lean into and possible improvements. This means that you’ll have to gather your network or members and facilitate a discussion that centers the map. Holley (2013) also offers some discussion questions you can use. Below are some questions I recommend based on her suggestions: ?? What are your network’s strengths? What parts of the network are very connected? Who are our leaders (i.e., individuals or organizations with a lot of connections)? ?? What connections would improve our network? ?? Who has differing perspectives or resources within our network? Can they be better connected? This clip is from a video where I discuss Woodland’s et al. (2012) five entry points to measuring collaborations. Want to see all five of Woodland’s et al. (2012) recommended entry points to measure collaboration? You can read the source article below or you can watch the rest of my video here: https://lnkd.in/gPJdwgWA Sources: 1. Woodland, R. H., & Hutton, M. S. (2012). Evaluating organizational collaborations: Suggested entry points and strategies. American journal of evaluation, 33(3), 366-383. 2. Holley, J. (2013). Introduction to Network Weaving. Network Weaver Pub. Want more resources? Join our mailing list to ensure you catch all our free content: https://lnkd.in/gz_qbYTR

Trust takes time to build in all types of relationships (including the relationships needed to do community work). This is important to keep in mind when working on participatory approaches. For people to agree to volunteer their time, you and your organization would have had to build relationships beforehand. What are you doing to build those positive relationships? #AutomatedPost

Have you mapped your communities of practice? This is one of the ways Woodland (2012) recommends you measure how well your network or coalition is doing. There are a lot of ways of doing this. However, the point is for you and your collaborators to see how well-connected your members are and identify ways you might improve the network. Holley (2013) suggests three reasons for mapping your network: ?? Improve how information and resources flow across your network ?? To be aware of the existing relationships and identify where you might help relationships build ?? Identify who may be a good fit for leadership roles within the network Like any data collection / reflection activity: mapping your communities of practice (or doing a network analysis) can help you and your coalition reflect on your strengths and identify areas for improvement. If you want help mapping your communities feel free to reach out! Want to see all five of Woodland’s (2012) recommended entry points to measure collaboration? You can read the source article below or you can watch the rest of my video here: https://lnkd.in/gPJdwgWA Sources: 1. Woodland, R. H., & Hutton, M. S. (2012). Evaluating organizational collaborations: Suggested entry points and strategies. American journal of evaluation, 33(3), 366-383. 2. Holley, J. (2013). Introduction to Network Weaving. Network Weaver Pub. Want more resources? Join our mailing list to ensure you catch all our free content: https://lnkd.in/gz_qbYTR

If you want to improve your organization / programs / services this is one of the questions you should be asking yourself. This is what evaluators, HSD professionals, and / or facilitators help you do. They will help you figure out the outcomes / principles you’re working towards. Support you to collect data to understand what actually happened. Help you to make sense of those data. Also, facilitate a conversation with you & collaborators about your next wise action. I’m currently learning about Agile practices. It seems like this is at the center of their work as well. Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Penguin.

Not sure what sort of data to collect? The landscape diagram can help you decide. If you and your collaborators don’t agree on what the best steps are, and you’re not certain about what will actually lead to the changes you want, you may be in what some people call chaos. This is common in crisis situations. Here, the knee-jerk reaction may be to wait and see. Instead, the focus should be on gaining a better understanding of what’s going on and gathering more-real time data that can guide action. This is the perfect time to lean into gathering qualitative data and doing a needs assessment. Learn more about the landscape diagram here: https://lnkd.in/gVTKSdC3

I came across this advice in adrienne maree brown’s book Holding Space. Building the ability to “hold space” or facilitate is so important, so I thought I’d share this advice. It’s easy for our collaborators to run from meeting to meeting or task to task. Taking a moment for all of us to remember who we are advocating for or representing could not only help us refocus on the purpose of our gatherings, but also remind us of why we do the work we do. I often facilitate conversations about data. It can be very easy to get lost in the details or interesting data points. Often, I remind people to zoom out and remember the reason we gathered the data in the first place (e.g., what we wanted to learn and why). Taking a moment to refocus can help us make sense of data, pull out the key lessons learned, and be more intentional about what we share out broadly. It will probably be more effective to ask people to remember who they are in the room for. For some of my clients, it would be the families and small children they serve. Refocusing on our “North Star” (i.e., the communities we serve) could help better spotlight what’s truly important. Book: Brown, A. M., & Gumbs, A. P. (2021). Stay Black And Breathe. In Holding change: The way of emergent strategy facilitation and mediation. essay, Consortium Book Sales & Dist.

Complex challenges require complex solutions. This is why I like frameworks that encourage community members and multi-sector organizations to come together to develop a shared positive vision for the future. Collective impact is one framework. It has five components: 1. A shared agenda 2. Shared measurements 3. Mutually reinforcing activities 4. Continuous communication 5. A backbone organization It acknowledges that we can come together to not only co-create the world we want to build, but also through all our contributions we can both work on improving individual outcomes while seeking to shift systems for the better. Plus, experts in this model encourage us to learn from its implementation and there are now papers discussing how the model has grown / shifted. This clip is from a video where I describe the model in more detail: https://lnkd.in/gJVjRH4H

How are you all sharing what you’re learning from the work you do? How do you seek out the learnings of others? A lot of us (evaluators & everyone else) work on very interesting work. Many of the people I work with have limited time to share lessons learned before having to move on to address the next fire. How might we make sure that our lessons are not taken for granted and shared with others? There is so much potential for us to learn from each other. #Evaluation #AutomatedPost https://lnkd.in/gvVvDVy

What are you doing to make sure that the data your coalition is collecting is useful? I often share that there are four general uses for data: 1. To understand what’s working 2. Identify improvements or adaptations 3. Support decision making 4. Make your case However, these are very broad, and at the Collective Impact Action Summit (2023) one of the presentations outlined a few more detailed options: 1. Communicating the vision 2. Case-making 3. Continuous improvement 4. Understanding needs 5. Partner accountability 6. Assessing partnership health You can check out details on this group’s report here: Equal Measure. (2023). The Opportunity Youth Forum: Using Data to Facilitate Systems Change. https://lnkd.in/gRTN9w7a You’ll probably see that there is a lot of overlap between the two lists. In the video where this clip is from I give you some more examples on how you might work towards the different use cases. You can find the video here: https://lnkd.in/gMrhVVGP However, the point is your data should be useful to your group. Otherwise, you’ll waste valuable resources. Why? Because you start a negative feedback loop. That is, leaders, staff, and community members notice that when data are collected it goes into the void. They become less likely to want to collect or provide data. For example, program participants may become less likely to respond to surveys or their responses may not be as thoughtful. Ultimately, this makes data collection a bigger burden. How do you shift this? Create some new patterns: 1. Be thoughtful about the data you plan to collect. For example, identify key outcomes or principles you want to explore. Or identify upcoming decisions you need data for. 2. Only collect the data you plan to use. 3. Engage your community, staff, and leaders in the data collection process so that they can tell you what will be useful. 4. Share data back with respondents and staff.