Alexandra Samuel: Im still very upset - but in a constructive way - about your keynote at the Leading Change Summit. I have such respect and affection for you, and at the same time I strongly disagree with what you said. I dont think we should encourage nonprofit professionals to be more relaxed about how they use data to tell their stories; I think that #nptech professionals should be concentrating on how we can deliver training (and other forms of capacity building) that will assist them in telling their stories with valid, reliable information that will withstand scrutiny. These nonprofit professionals dont need graduate degrees in statistics, social research methods, and database administration - they need something that is pared down to the skills they will use in their daily work lives. This is something that Im working on in Massachusetts. God knows that it isnt easy to organize and find support for this sort of training; Ive been working toward delivering it for almost two years now. Oddly enough, finding mavens who were generous enough to volunteer their time and expertise was really easy. (Im looking at you, Kathryn Engelhardt Cronk, Beth Kanter, and Georges Grinstein. Youre the best ever!) However, finding folks who were willing to underwrite it has been crazy difficult. Fortunately, the team at The Mel King Institute for Community Building are seriously interested in stepping up. (The ideal hosts!) Since Ive been fighting an uphill battle since October 2012 to offer this kind of capacity building, I can sympathize (deeply) with the desire to reassure nonprofit professionals that they shouldnt worry about capturing, analyzing, and reporting their data with academic rigor. Its much more difficult to figure out exactly what kind of training their really do need for the work in front of them, and to figure out how to offer it, but I think thats what we need to do.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 13:28:38 +0000
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