What’s Wrong With Nonprofit Data with Meena Das

This episode is sponsored by my wonderful friends at Qgiv! I'll be holding a free webinar with them on July 21 - to go https://www.bit.ly/qgivandjulia and register for free! See you there!
 
The data we have is flawed. My guest this week, Meenakshi ‘Meena’ Das, writes: “For far too long, we have ignored collecting critical data points, missed creating healthy dialogues around that data, and we have added our biases to all of it — all of it — to perform research operations and take crucial decisions from it.”

What is "good data" and how can we collect it? How can we build inclusive and equitable research and analysis into our programs - to help accomplish our missions and to become more financially sustainable?

Meenakshi (Meena) Das (she/her/hers) is Founder & Philanthropy Analytics Consultant at NamasteData. 

She specializes in designing survey-based research tools and analyzing engagement to help organizations find the strategic value of their data. Meena spends her time outside work as a mentor to immigrants and as pro bono research advisor to small shops.

Her two recent favorite projects are working on making data-based research tools more DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) compliant and designing the second season of her podcast “Being and Unbeing an Immigrant” where she wants to bring together the families of immigrants left behind in the home country. 

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

• Newsletter for changemakers of the nonprofit industry to learn & share about equity-led data, research, & analytics
• What “inclusive and equitable research and analytics” means and has to do with nonprofit leaders
• What kind of data should we be collecting and how can this make us better fundraisers
• Making data-based research tools more grounded in DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility)

Connect with Meena Das:

• Website: https://www.namastedata.org/ 
• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/meenadas/ 
• Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6BSIxPZhN9e6LdPp4kXrFW
• Data Is For Everyone (my virtual school)

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements. Julia’s online courses, webinars, and talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and raise more money online.

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