20 Aug, 2025

Try This: The Data-Driven Decision Tree Walk-Through

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-08-20T10:11:47-04:00August 20th, 2025|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: Capacity Building, Data Driven, Data Sense-Making, Evaluative Thinking, Try This|0 Comments

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Staff want to engage with data-driven decision making, but they don’t always have the time or space to do so.

When organizational leaders make decision-making processes transparent and collaborative, it supports staff, even if they can’t act on every idea right away.

This week, we’ll take a more hands-on approach. I’ll walk you through an activity you can use with your team to turn raw data into clear, actionable insights: The Data-Driven Decision Tree.

The Data-Driven Decision Tree is one of two activities taken from “Prioritize This: Data-Driven Decision Making“, a free resource provided to my newsletter subscribers. This activity helps break down program and service evaluation data into actionable steps based on feasibility and impact.

Objective:

Help your team turn data into clear, actionable next steps by exploring feasibility, mission alignment, and participant impact.

This activity is ideal for:

Staff who design and implement programs
Leadership responsible for strategic decisions
Any staff who collect, analyze, or share participant feedback

What you’ll need:

A copy of the Data-Driven Decision Tree. (Sign up for my newsletter to access the full exercise (including the decision tree visual) from Prioritize This: Data-Driven Decision Making.)
Program or evaluation data you want to analyze
A notetaker or facilitator to guide discussion
Time allotted: 30–45 minutes, depending on group size and number of data points

The steps:

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13 Aug, 2025

How Nonprofit Leaders Can Balance Staff Capacity with Data-Driven Decision Making

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-08-13T14:26:37-04:00August 13th, 2025|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: Capacity Building, Data Driven, Evaluative Thinking, Monitoring & Evaluation|0 Comments

Here’s how to balance both without sacrificing impact.

In my last post, we explored the tension between wanting to engage with data-driven decision making and not having the space or capacity to do so.

Many staff want to think strategically, but without dedicated time and structural support, evaluation efforts become something that’s outsourced rather than embedded in organizational culture.

Nonprofit leaders play a critical role in shifting this dynamic by creating conditions where evaluative thinking is not just a one-off activity, but part of everyday decision-making.

This shift doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intention, space, and a shared understanding of how leaders and staff make decisions. Leaders need to guide teams in weighing both the feasibility of a potential change and its potential impact on participants or outcomes. These two factors can help shape priorities in a way that feels realistic for the organization, while also respecting the insight and energy of staff.

In this post, we’ll look at how to navigate two realities: first, the emotional weight of setting aside important but currently unfeasible changes, and second, the value of making the decision-making process transparent and collaborative. Along the way, I’ll also pose two key reflection questions for leaders to use with their teams—questions that can help staff focus their energy where it matters most.

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6 Aug, 2025

Ask Nicole: We’re Too Busy for Data-Driven Decision Making

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-08-07T16:46:23-04:00August 6th, 2025|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, Data Driven, Monitoring & Evaluation, Staff|0 Comments

A smiling Black woman wearing a yellow top and gold earrings, is framed by a purple border. The text reads: "Ask Nicole — We're Too Busy for Data-Driven Decision Making." The image is branded with "Nicole Clark Consulting – Raise Your Voice for Women & Girls of Color." — Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

In nearly every monitoring and evaluation (M&E) project I’ve supported (whether it’s building a M&E framework or helping teams with data sense making) there comes a moment, often near the end, when staff reflect candidly.

“This was actually really interesting,” they’d say, “…but we don’t really get time to think like this.”

It’s a quiet acknowledgment of a very real tension: Staff see the value in evaluative thinking, but day-to-day programming demands of don’t allow them the time or space to engage with it meaningfully.

They’re not admissions of disinterest or resistance—they’re reminders of what it means to be inside a maxed-out organization.

Evaluation becomes something that’s outsourced to an external evaluator. Not because staff wants it to be, but because there’s no room to slow down, reflect, and strategize as a team.

And yet, the more you push data work to the margins, the more disconnected it becomes from the real day-to-day decision making.

Here’s how organizational leadership can make space for data-driven decision making—even when it feels like there’s none to spare.

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23 Jul, 2025

Try This: Leading Strategic Planning with a Social Work Lens

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-07-23T08:42:52-04:00July 23rd, 2025|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Social Work, Try This|0 Comments

A group of five women of color collaborate around a table with open notebooks and papers. One woman writes while others observe and discuss. Text overlay reads “Try This: Leading Strategic Planning with a Social Work Lens.” — Try this activity to see your social work skills through a strategic lens.

What would be possible if more social workers stepped into strategic planning?

Social workers are natural systems thinkers, collaborators, and process facilitators—exactly the kinds of people organizations need when it’s time to step back and plan for the future.

Yet many social workers don’t see themselves as candidates to lead strategic planning efforts. That role often feels reserved for consultants, executive leaders, or those with formal strategy training. But strategic planning is about understanding people, holding complexity, and guiding values-aligned decisions, as much as it is about frameworks and facilitation.

If you’ve ever supported a group through change, named a pattern that no one else could see, or translated community needs into action, then you already have the foundation to lead a strategic planning process.

This activity helps social workers explore their readiness to lead a strategic planning process at the organizational level—and positions them to claim that leadership with clarity and confidence.

Objective:

To help social workers recognize and articulate the strategic, facilitative, and relational skills they bring to leading an organizational strategic planning process.

This activity is ideal for:

Social workers in program design, implementation, or operations roles
Social workers considering leadership or consulting roles
Social workers interested in using their skills to shape organizational direction

What you’ll need:

45–60 minutes of uninterrupted time
Pen and paper, whiteboard, or digital workspace
Optional: a recent or upcoming strategic planning process in mind

The steps:

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9 Jul, 2025

Designing Programs and Services with a Social Work Lens

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-07-09T16:32:40-04:00July 9th, 2025|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: program design, Programs & Services, Social Work|0 Comments

An Asian woman wearing a white button-down shirt holds a pen and clipboard while thinking. A text overlay reads “Designing Programs and Services with a Social Work Lens.” — The next time someone asks, “Who designed this?”,—the answer could be you.

Social workers—especially those who have worked in case management, group facilitation, or crisis response—bring a nuanced and often underutilized lens to programs and services design.

In fact, it’s in these roles that social workers often notice how ineffective programs and services can be.

Trained to assess needs in real time, respond to complexity, and create plans of care that center dignity and context, social workers have the ability to design programs and services as much as we implement them.

Program and service design isn’t just for project managers, technical consultants, or evaluators. This post is a reminder (and reframe) for social workers who may not see themselves as program and service designers, but already have what it takes to design and lead thoughtful, inclusive, and responsive programming.

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Try This: The Data-Driven Decision Tree Walk-Through

Objective:

This activity is ideal for:

What you’ll need:

The steps:

How Nonprofit Leaders Can Balance Staff Capacity with Data-Driven Decision Making

Ask Nicole: We’re Too Busy for Data-Driven Decision Making

Try This: Leading Strategic Planning with a Social Work Lens

Objective:

This activity is ideal for:

What you’ll need:

The steps:

Designing Programs and Services with a Social Work Lens

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