On the road to becoming grassroots and data driven, it’s tempting to start collecting data as soon as possible to determine your impact.
From funders and program participants to community leaders and policy makers, data you’ve gleaned from focus groups, informant interviews, and surveys juggle voices and perspectives of many stakeholders.
But once you have all this data, what do you do with it? And how do you prioritize these voices?
Here are 3 ways (from easy-to-do to more time-consuming) to prioritize your data findings.
This activity is ideal for:
- Anyone responsible for leading data sense making processes
- Anyone interested in participating in data sense making processes
- Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking into their work
Here’s what you need:
- Whatever setup you use to capture your ideas (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.) but make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to
The steps:
First, analyze the data and identify themes across all stakeholders and specific to the stakeholder type. While combing the data, if the same word, phrase or sentiment shows up, that’s considered a theme.
Next, arrange your stakeholders into three groups: Primary, secondary, and tertiary.
- Primary – Stakeholders closely connected to the program (campaign, initiative, etc.) and are directly impacted by its success. Examples: Programs participants, staff
- Secondary – Stakeholders indirectly connected to the program (campaign, initiative, etc.) but are invested in its success and can closely see the impact of that success on the primary stakeholders. Examples: Parents, teachers, community members
- Tertiary – Further removed from the program (campaign, initiative, etc.), these stakeholders are still influential and invested in its success. Examples: Boards of directors, policy makers, funders
Now, arrange the data under the appropriate group. Since you’ve identified themes, you now have a sense of what each stakeholder group prioritizes.
Let’s process
As you look through the themes under each stakeholder group, there are a couple ways I’ve identified to prioritize the data from easiest-to-do to more work.
The easiest is prioritizing the data from the Primary stakeholder group, using the data from the Secondary and Tertiary groups to inform how the Primary group’s data gets prioritized.
2nd option: Use your staff to determine what would be the easiest/most emergent data priorities to focus on. As your staff are the drivers of your programming, they have keen understanding of how the program (campaign, initiative, etc.) is supposed to run and its outcomes. They also are accountable to each stakeholder group. This impacts their capacity, and they will be able to quickly identify which data to focus on based on their time and the resources they readily have access to.
3rd option: Take the top themes from each group, and develop a plan for addressing each theme. It’s more work, but if you have to prioritize data from each stakeholder group, this is your best bet.
As you continue building your evaluative thinking processes, you will be able to quickly identity which process above to use based on your circumstances and capacity.
Key takeaway
Data sense making is tedious but rewarding work. You’re really getting a sense of what’s happening in your program (campaign, initiative, etc.) Breaking down data by stakeholder group and determining your priorities is a great start on the road to becoming grassroots and data driven.
Try this process out and let me know how it goes for you (or if you’d like for me to assist you with this process, let me know how we can work together).
Raise Your Voice: How do you work with stakeholders to prioritize data findings? Share below in the comments section.
