Principle 3: Only gather information if it leads to action



One good question is worth a dozen points.

With more high quality data available to us than ever before, it is increasingly important to begin community discussion by asking effective questions. There is nothing that more quickly repels interest and ends constructive discussion than a ream of data tables or raft of bar charts that nobody requested.

Indeed, educator and nonprofit administrators often report that they are drowning in data. How often do they complain that they’re overwhelmed by answers? The difference between confusion and enlightenment is whether or not the information helped answer a meaningful question. And the most important questions are the ones that members of a collective impact initiative are already asking each day; they are questions that could lead a nonprofit, teacher or parent involved in a student’s life to take smarter action.

By methodically working across a range of stakeholders to understand what information needs to flow to which people, how often, and in what form, a backbone organization can develop a clear model for the data system a community really needs.

Three Types of Measures and the Questions They Answer

Most organizations have distinct questions related to the individual responsibility to the youth they serve directly through programs. They also have questions about their shared accountability with others to overall youth achievement. Finally, they see the benefit of a collective approach to shared population level outcomes across the community.

Shared Community Measures

Shared accountability questions are what a mayor might ask about the whole population, such as, “Are young people in my city thriving?” Many organizations contribute to youth wellbeing and impact is measured in different ways. This data is usually provided by government agencies in a highly aggregate form. Measures of factors like kindergarten readiness, youth unemployment, or college readiness are often referred to as community indicators, measuring population level outcomes. Collecting this information does not require sophisticated technology systems and is hugely valuable for fueling conversations about community need, allocation of resources, and the strategies that a collective impact partnership might undertake to improve the results they care most about.

Collaborative Action Measures

Collaborative action questions are asked by groups of organizations who are all working towards improving a shared measure, such as, “What can we learn from each other to better serve our kids?” Organizational improvement is crucial, but rarely does one organization serve all students or is a student served by just one organization. Organizations whose work all contribute to a shared community measure (for example, various early childhood programs all contribute to improving kindergarten readiness) increase improvement by coming together to share successful practices and align measures. Measures for this collective work might not look altogether different from individual responsibility measures or shared community measures, but the focus will be on aligning measures across organizations to ensure all participants are collecting data consistently in order to identify impactful practices that can be scaled across organizations to better serve all kids.

Individual Performance Measures

Individual responsibility questions are asked by organizations about their own performance, such as, “How many of the students I serve improve their school attendance, and at what cost?” These are outcomes for which a school or agency is directly responsible. The outcomes are often measured through individual records in more complex data systems. While a single organization is almost never solely responsible for community-wide youth outcomes and there are dozens of contributors to any child’s upbringing, it is through the practice of measuring performance, sharing outcomes, and aligning activities at this level that drive systemlevel improvement.

At all levels, working across partners to define these questions is frequently more difficult than collecting the information to answer them. But the experience of dozens of communities across the country should be a reminder that to begin with the data, rather the data’s purpose, is always a mistake.

Case Example: United Way of Greater Cincinnati's Success By 6 Data Project

When United Way of Greater Cincinnati’s Success By 6 (SB6) took on the task of leading the region to meet the Bold Goal of 85% kindergarten readiness by 2020, the need for expansion of data and research capacity became increasingly urgent. While the established first generation early childhood data systems (one for Northern Kentucky, one for Southwest Ohio) enable annual reporting and research-oriented analysis, they were not designed to support a data-driven culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

In January 2014, SB6 launched the SB6 Data Project to assess and improve data systems and work processes that support kindergarten readiness efforts and inform early childhood education practices, strategies, and investments. The first, and likely most critical, step of the SB6 Data Project was to build a strong foundation for the project, including establishing goals and key questions that include that will guide any future data systems work.