Why call it “Data Storytelling”?
If you are not a nonprofit data professional, you may not know that ‘data storytelling’ is far from an industry-standard term. It’s nothing like ‘engineering’ or ‘financial advising’. In fact, of the many terms used to describe data work at human service nonprofit organizations, ‘data storytelling’ is admittedly rare.
The Data Storytelling Collective (DSC) currently counts over 20 Chicago-area nonprofit data professionals as members, and none of their positions or departments include the term ‘data storytelling’. Rather, their job titles include a striking variety of terms, including (from A-Z): compliance, contracts, data, evaluation, grants, impact, improvement, learning, outcomes, performance, quality, and transformation. This variety is not a reflection of large differences in our members’ job responsibilities; rather, we just haven’t all agreed on what to call this work we’re doing.
So why call it “data storytelling”? Because it’s simply the most fitting and inclusive term I’ve found to describe the data work I have done within community-based nonprofits over the last six years.
“Story” may make you think of the tales we tell children at bedtime, but it’s much bigger than that. Stories are how we make sense of ourselves, each other, and the world around us. In a professional context, “storytelling” is not just what we do via written reports or oral presentations; it’s how we share information, both formally and informally, in slide decks, emails, small- and large-group meetings, and a hundred other places.
Contrary to popular belief, data do not speak for themselves, and the data collected by human service nonprofits don’t tell their own story. Effective data use requires nonprofit professionals dedicated to making sense of data. These data professionals help their nonprofits tell rigorous and compelling stories with their data, and then leverage those data to make better decisions and improve programs. Thus, whether they are at the C-suite level, specialists, or anywhere in between, these professionals are rightly called “data storytellers”.
Nonprofit data work takes on many forms for many audiences. This excellent 2023 review of data use in nonprofit organizations by Duncan J. Mayer and Robert L. Fischer, scholars at Case Western Reserve, identifies three broad purposes for collecting data in nonprofits: accountability (mostly for current funders), marketing (mostly for prospective funders), and performance improvement (mostly for organization leadership). Human service nonprofits collect data to answer many different questions with conflicting priorities, such as these:
Are we implementing the program the way we told funders we would?
What recent program successes would compel new funders to support our work?
How can we improve the program to serve our clients more effectively?
“Data storytelling” can address all these purposes and questions. As data storytellers, we collect, analyze, and visualize data to tell stories to both internal and external audiences, to measure community impact and even help maximize that impact through quality improvement efforts.
The DSC focuses on nonprofit data storytelling, since that’s the specific context for the data storytelling that DSC members are doing. As Mayer and Fischer (2023, p. 3) explain, “nonprofit organizations are sufficiently unique, and merit bespoke solutions and management technologies.” The DSC goes one step further to focus on “human service” or “community-based” nonprofits, meaning those focused on providing direct services to clients in need, since data work at human service nonprofits is uniquely challenging.
Should those of us who embrace the term ‘data storytelling’ avoid terms like ‘evaluation’, ‘impact’, or ‘quality’? Surely not; these terms have their place. But they also have narrower definitions that can hinder their utility when describing nonprofit data work as a whole. For instance, “evaluation” inherently evokes making judgments of better or worse. There’s no doubt that this is a key element of nonprofit data work, but we also do plenty of work that is not evaluative in nature. Yet there’s arguably nothing within the purview of nonprofit data work that falls outside the scope of “data storytelling”.
If you’re interested in learning more about how the DSC defines “nonprofit data storytelling”, check out our framework or send us your questions.
