She was extremely adept at looking at how souls feel as they are knocked around in this world. She has deeply and profoundly changed how I saw myself. I read what she wrote and I realized that I was not alone. It is a God experience if you want to label it. Which I don’t.

How does this apply to nonprofits? Easy.

Literature, art in general is a part of radical and lasting social change. Those of us living in the global south know that our voices are marginalized. We see in the higher poverty rates, violent crime rates, wider spread drug use, untenable living conditions, unreasonably dangerous employment, lack of access to nutritious foods and quality health care. However art out of the southern US and the global south are–as bell hooks so often talks about–co-opted by a minority elite who assists in keeping our voices quiet. I think that possibly we could consider that by co-opting our identity, commodify it, putting it out of reach it shows how our ideas are matriculated from the ‘least of us’ to the top. Our voice is being heard and it is changing things, despite an attempt to remove any radical connotations from our creative expressions.

I expressed an opinion on this once before online and it was one of the most difficult conversations that I had ever had to be a part of. I was bullied. I found myself doubting the worthwhileness of expressing my belief in the creative, as a tool to build movements and exact change. I am nervous even writing this. Since that one discussion I have not written about this topic now it is 3 years later and I want to talk about it again.

Here Is What I Believe

Don’t count out the poets, painters, quilters, musicians, knitters, and actresses. They and a whole slew of other types of creative expressions have a unique ability to articulate the absurd disparities, to those who would never otherwise hear about them. They are a core group of your constituency that needs to be used in building your organizations. Not only that but the ability to create, builds up a spirit and is an additional factor in creating resilience, among those we serve.

TIP:

Find these artist in your volunteer pool and ask them to use their ability to participate in your organization.

How Can I Use Art & Social Change for Professional Development

Use art that already exists to spark dialogue as a part of building the ideology behind your mission, vision, values and goals:

•  Picasso’s Guernica. How can you use it to talk about war and peace in our world today? How has war affected the population we serve?
• Read just about any poem by Rich and ask the question is it a feminist writer or is it a writer or is it a women writer? What do women face in our world today that impedes the goal of equality?
• Listen to old spirituals and ask, aside from the obvious connection to a higher power, what was the song communicating? You might be surprised yourself if you listen to “Wade in the Water” with the knowledge that it contained literal instructions for those seeking freedom. What are the songs used by the people you serve that express a desire to be free? My example “All the Single Ladies” its a rallying cry if I ever heard one.
• If you want to have a conversation about what we teach today and how we teach it, read this and ask how the person reading has experienced both missions:

“Universal public education has two possible—and contradictory—missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization. The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally ‘gifted’ few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope—toward low-wage temporary jobs. The second is the direction our society has taken. The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole of society is incalculable.” (p. 162) from ‘”Arts of the Possible” by Rich

This months email newsletter is being created in Mail Chimp. I am using only the free version of the program because if your group is like ours we actually have no budget so we have to be creative. I want our group to expand our reach and to demonstrate our professionalism. One way to do that is to have professional looking outreach materials.

So far I have spent 3.5 hours on my first newsletter. Here is what I’ve done:

• 12 email addresses,
• signing up for the service,
• choosing a template,
• choosing a different template that better fit our need
• creating content for the first campaign (including adding document links and setting Twitter and Facebook links)

The user friendly factor of the very basic use of Mail Chimp is lots of thumbs up. Note that I haven’t explored beyond what I am using it for a monthly newsletter update being sent via email.

Some reasons you might want to use MailChimp:

• You use WordPress. Their set up is very similar. Not the same but pretty close. So the learning curve is small.
• They have some great pre-built newsletter, email and mobile pages
• The amount of free emails per month is huge. According to the site:

Yes to grow your capacity you need great data gathering skills and technology.  If you aren’t able or trained to be an organization that uses data tied to technology then OK, it just isn’t where you are right now. There are still many ways to collect data with out software to help you gather, code and interpret what you find.

Lo-Fi Data Collection Strategies

A Facebook poll(s) (recognize the technology gap for our community members who don’t have access to internet)

• Questionnaires for phone, face to face, or email (make it a part of your intake for volunteers, members, clients, board members etc.)

Old case notes (know what you are looking for before you begin, choose a limited number of files that represent your ideal population, gather a manageable amount of information)

• Focus Group (Identify your ideal audience, create leading questions (this means they don’t have a yes or no answer) and record the session with your iphone or computer)

• Text a multiple choice question

• (don’t hate me) Excel or Google Docs spreadsheets for organizing findings

• Internet search for reports/findings in Arkansas on the subjects you are looking into. The data may already exist.

You will get a lot of information if you consistently ask the same questions to your stakeholders. Know what you are looking for and how you will use the data you get. Don’t just gather to gather. KNOW WHEN TO STOP. You aren’t a University research center and you aren’t supposed to be. The data you gather needs to be manageable in amounts and applicable to your set objectives.

Tip:

One of the best things you can do when you know you will be collecting data for a program is to collect data before AND after you implement a program. It will help you assess a truer impact of a program. This in turn will help you communicate your successes to your funders. It will also help you adjust your programs, not with a shot in the dark approach rather based on something more substantial.

For the love , please give anyone who willingly participates in a focus group some good coffee and snacks!

The data cycle has 5-ish parts.

• Collection (Which we touched on here)
• Managing Data You Collect
• Transforming &/or Merging Your Data (I’m not so totally sure what this means either)
• Creating Visualize models of your data
• Using your data

How To Data?

There are a hundred or even thousands of ways of executing each and every point on this list. There is a sorrowful few resources to assist in the “HOW TO” of data collection and the following cycle. There is a need to learn how to use data but there is another way! Don’t reinvent the wheel.

TIP:

Use other peoples data! Collaboration means that the work we do is shared with those we connect with. This can and does include data. If you don’t have the resources to collect significant amounts of data or it isn’t in your plan as a group or organization find other peoples data!

1. Go to your foundations (if you are grant sponsored),
2. Go to your partner organizations,
3. Go to your board members
4.  Ask your volunteers
5. Is there a University in your town? They have data and they need someone to use it!
6. World Wide Web!

All of these are potential data sources. You don’t even know what you are looking for sometimes until you find it. If you do know you want, say the outcomes of a successful project involving the Arkansas State Legislature, somebody might have that. Put the word out on the street you would like to see it. And for the love, thank publicly anyone who contributes data.

As I said in the last Process: Data post, I have seen this reluctance to jump into data collection from other rural-ish nonprofits. Not because people were incapable but because they haven’t seen data collection work for them. And who has time for something that doesn’t work!

Data, Who Dat?

To make data work we have to understand Data  and its place in the cycle of information used by our organizations. The NTEN webinar “Becoming a Data Driven Nonprofit” helped to articulate the very basic cycle needed to be effect Data gatherers and consumers.

What are the best practices for collecting data. They are different for every kind of issue and need. Public health data collection is a different process than a community needs assessment. What data are you collecting? What other organizations have done it well? Use their methods adjust them for your cultural and social realities.

Collecting Data

You can gather a ton of information on how to do this but I recommend looking at 2 or 3 best practice suggestions in your field. Take what you like and leave the rest. This is an experiment to create an organization that can illustrate your mission & visions relevance in a language understood on a national and international level.

Tip:

Start with the simplest kind of data collection. Paper questionnaires for your employees. Or a Facebook poll. A few simple (4 or 5) questions is a starting point. And keep it manageable 20 people MAX on your first data run. You will get information, I promise. But not so much you can’t use it

Tip:

Use the finding you get. Even if what you find is that Elmo is the favorite Muppet of all time. Send everyone a Muppet themed birthday card for the next year. You know they like it. You implemented the data and you will see the response. YOU HAVE TO HAVE PRACTICE!

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Now go volunteer!

CollaborateAR by Rachel Townsend is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.