Wait, What? Numbers That Bewilder

60-SECOND DATA TIP_3 (1).png

Reposted from July 2019

Numbers can bewilder our hunter-gatherer brains. For more than 95 percent of human history, folks were not processing written numbers or words. But they were processing visual information in the form of color, shape, and size. It’s not surprising that our brains, evolved over many thousands of years, are better at understanding data in visual form than in word and number form. So when numbers confuse, try “translating” them to the visual.

Here’s a great example of a number that makes me scratch my head: “54% more students with monitors improved attendance than students without monitors.” The statement relates to a fictional program that (like some non-fictional programs) pairs students with monitors to boost their attendance. At first blush, to me, that sounds pretty impressive. It sounds like this: if 10% of the students without monitors improved their attendance, then 64% (10% + 54%) with monitors improved their attendance. Or, put another way, six times as many kids with monitors improved their attendance as kids without monitors.

But my brain just made a wrong turn. That 54% is showing what statisticians call “relative difference.” And the problem with this type of stat is that indicators with low values have a tendency to produce large relative differences even when the “absolute difference” is small.

Okay, still bewildered? No worries, I give you now a picture for your primitive brain. Let’s say, in our fictional program, there are 10 students per class. In one class, all of the kids got paired with monitors. In the other class, none of the kids did. The picture below shows how many kids in each class improved their attendance.

 
 

So the difference (aka “absolute difference”) is 1.4 (4.0-2.6) which means that 1.4 more kids in the class with monitors improved their attendance. How did that measly 1.4 become 54%? Well, relative difference is calculated as the absolute difference divided by the “standard” which, in this case, is the class without monitors. So 4.0 minus 2.6 divided by 2.6 or .54, which when expressed as a percentage is 54%.

If relative difference requires varsity level processing for many of us, then percentages are junior varsity. So if I were visualizing the difference between the two groups, I would stay away from both and use an icon chart, like the one above. I might make it even more concrete by showing 25 person icons in each group since the typical elementary school classroom has 25 students. I would then use color to show that 6.5 students out of 25 without monitors had improved attendance and 10 students out of 25 with monitors had improved attendance. So, if you bring the program to a typical classroom, you might expect it to improve the attendance of an additional 3 to 4 kids.

Bottom line? Numbers can be like road signs pointing us in the wrong direction. To move folks in the right direction, make your message concrete and visible.

See other data tips in this series for more information on how to effectively visualize and make good use of your organization's data.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.








Take Some Tips From The Information is Beautiful Awards

My tip for this week is to check out the Information is Beautiful (IIB) Awards’ longlist of nominees for 2024. IMO, there are some great ones here but also some beautiful-yet-confusing ones. Take a look at the 2024 vizzes in the Humanitarian longlist. I found the following three particularly inspiring. Click on the images below for more information.

Great way to provide context

The circles help us to understand the dramatic reduction in deaths due to natural disasters in the 21st century, particularly in areas harder-hit by disasters in the past, such as Asia. Of course, most of the 21st century is ahead of us, so the size of the circles will change over time.

 

Helpful Color Coding

This data dashboard uses consistent color coding across charts with cool tones indicating type of incident and warm tones indicating gender.

 

Effective Chart Type

Each circle in this beeswarm chart represents one of more than 13,000 incidents where at least one migrant died or went missing. The circle's size indicates the number of people affected. It provides a sobering understanding of the magnitude of the problem over time and across regions.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Viz Resources You Should Know: Dabbling in the Data

Here’s a new addition to my highly-curated resources list: Dabbling in the Data. I occasionally write a 60-second data tip describing a particular resource, including why I think it’s cool. And I link each of these tips to a resources list on my website.

What is it?

Dabbling in the Data is a free participatory evaluation guide that provides hands-on, practical group activities and techniques that will help organizations make sense of data. Each of the activities described in the guide includes the types of situations the method is best suited for, step-by-step instructions for facilitators, and suggested adaptations. This guide was expanded in late 2024 with new activities, tools, virtual adaptations, and playlists for mixed methods.

Who’s it for?

Nonprofit manager, evaluators, or anyone who wants to improve the analysis of data by involving multiple interest holders who bring multiple perspectives to the interpretation of data. Group analysis also helps group members to understand the importance of data to their work.

Who’s behind it?

Public Profit, an independent evaluation consultancy that works with nonprofits, foundations, schools, and governments to help them use data more effectively.

Why I think it’s cool

The activities provide both meaningful and fun ways to engage with data. This guide can help anyone in an organization to understand and influence the paths among data, findings, and action.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 15)

“All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy interactive viz. This one is from the New York Times. See a snapshot of this interactive map (with some embellishments) above but definitely follow the link to give it a spin for yourself. Now, you may be thinking: “The New York Times is the Grand Poobah of data visualization. I can’t do what they do.” But you can! Actually, what they are doing here is pretty simple and can be done easily with drag-and-drop tools like Tableau.

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Make it personal. The map allows you to zoom in on an area of interest to you to see how the issue may affect you or those you know.

  • Multiple perspectives. The map provides three lenses on the location of fatal shootings which help you put the data into context:

    • The number of shootings near each block from 2020 to 2023;

    • The change in shootings since 2016-19; and

    • The racial makeup of areas affected by gun violence.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Do Data Dashboards Pay Off?

I haven’t come across much research on the effectiveness of dashboards for organizations. So I thought I’d share this one with you from MIT. Okay, it’s from the for-profit sector. BUT, it does give you something to chew on. Based on a survey of 1,311 companies, the researchers found that those that were better at using data dashboards were also better at other things like innovation and growth. If you are thinking, “Well, that’s correlation rather than causation,” then I’m glad. Maybe these data tips are making an impact.

However, their research does suggest that something about using dashboards could be paying off for companies. Based on their analyses, which included a case study of one company, the researchers suggest that one reason "dashboarding” appears effective is that:

“Everybody in the company gets to see how it is doing against agreed-upon metrics and works together to make course corrections when necessary.”

The process of getting everyone on board with using a dashboard, they note, can take awhile. They also contend that the best dashboards focus not only on what value is created but also on how that value is created. So although their findings are only suggestive, they do jibe with common sense.

Many nonprofits have shifted their data collection to focus on metrics that help to asses their processes and impacts. Fewer, it seems, are effectively using dashboards to look at those metrics everyday and discuss patterns, trends, and benchmarks, and make course corrections along the way.

Creating customized interactive dashboards isn’t as hard as it sounds and can even be created with free applications like Tableau Public. If you’d like to set up a free consultation to explore this idea with me, please do.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Present Data More Effectively For Your Audience (aka The Human Mind)

We hear a lot about applying data to action. But for data to make an impact, it must first take a journey through the human mind. Understanding that journey helps us to consume and present data so that the mind can actually see, grasp, remember, and apply it. Here's a preview of the first few slides of my upcoming webinar on this topic: How To Present Data More Effectively For Your Audience (aka The Human Mind).

Want to know what a dog spitting out a pill has to do with data presentations? Then join me on March 17th. Sign up HERE. Use code 'friend10' for $10 off registration.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Is AI Overkill and Wasteful for Nonprofits?

Food for thought. Most nonprofits don’t need AI tools to deal with their data. Using it to calculate a simple average is like “using a bazooka to swat a fly,’ according to Chitra Sundaram in her article Beyond the hype: Do you really need an LLM for your data?* The sixty-second version of her article is: what most for-profit and nonprofit organizations need are clear data visualizations, descriptive analytics (such as trends and KPIs), and user-friendly data dashboards. And we already have excellent tools for these tasks including Tableau, Qlik and Power BI. Moreover, AI tools are resource hogs. We should focus instead on sustainable IT which is about “optimizing resources, minimizing waste, and choosing the right-sized solution.” When is an AI tool worth it? Sundaram says: when you are working with very complex, unstructured data such as text, voice, or images. Not when you are dealing with structured data (i.e. data in spreadsheets and databases) on participants, donors, or financials, as most nonprofits are.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

*LLM stands for large language models which are a type of AI (artificial intelligence).

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

It's Love Data Week!

What’s that?

Love Data Week is an international celebration of data, taking place every year during the week of Valentine's Day. Nonprofit organizations, universities, government agencies, corporations and individuals are encouraged to host and participate in data-related events and activities.

What’s in it for me?

Lots of free online events, many of which are relevant to nonprofit work such as workshops on data visualization, infographics, data resources, data privacy, etc. See the full list of events.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

What's Fundamental to Quality Data?

In their Harvard Business Review article How to Make Everyone Great at Data, Thomas Redman and Donna Burbank describe how companies and nonprofits, despite good intentions, get data wrong due to:

  • the way they enter data into databases,

  • perverse incentives around data, and

  • general distrust of data among employees.

How can organizations get data right? Redman and Burbank sum it up as follows:

I can think of no better way to show staff how the data they collect and input influences decision-making than to visualize that data. Show them a chart with a trend and then ask questions like these:

  • Does this trend look right?

  • Do our data entry procedures appear to have affected the data and thus the trend? If so, what can we improve?

  • What concerns do you have about basing decisions on this trend?

  • Assuming the trend is correct, what might we do differently based on what the trend is showing? What other data would help us to make this decision?

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Best Data Viz of 2024

Looking for a fun (if somewhat geeky) study/work break? Check out these best-of lists for 2024:

New York Times

Visual Capitalist

FlowingData

The Webby Awards

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Context is King

Reposted from July 2023

This “sketchplanation” elegantly demonstrates the importance of context in understanding anything. Since data visualizations are supposed to help people understand something, we should pay close attention to context when creating them, adding as much context as is needed for others to appreciate what’s going on and act on it. Considering the following charts . . .

Low-context chart

This is your garden variety chart. I see them all the time. Sure, it provides some context by comparing clients served in different zip code areas. But it doesn’t give me enough context to understand if these numbers are high, low, or somewhere in between. This chart needs more context.

Moderate-context chart

This chart is better than the one above. By providing the previous year’s numbers, we can see where there has been increases and decreases and how large and small they were as well as compare the number increases (3) to the number of decreases (1).

Moderate-context chart

This chart, too, allows for better assessment of the numbers than the first chart did. By simply adding a reference line for the goal, we have a better understanding of what’s going on and where we might need to take action. A reference line showing the average number of clients per zip code might also be helpful.

High-context chart

This “small multiples chart”* gives us much more context by showing how the current numbers compare to past years. Consider, for example, the trend for 60601. Just knowing the current and past years’ numbers would not give you an appreciation of the overall upward trend.

*Small multiples chart: a series of similar graphs or charts using the same scale and axes, allowing them to be easily compared

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 14)

“All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy viz that I came across in the Tableau Public Gallery. All nonprofits need to understand and show the demographics of their participants or the communities they serve. This dashboard of South Korea’s demographics uses some good strategies you can apply to your organization’s charts and maps. Keep scrolling to examine the dashboard and see my suggestions on what to steal from it.

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Heat = Density. The map uses warmer colors to show higher population density and cooler colors to show lower density. This makes finding the big population centers easy.

  • Charts for key demographics. A quick review of the charts on the right gives you a clear understanding of demographic trends over time.

  • Chart title as color legend. Using the chart title to explain the color coding in the chart is a great way to save space on small charts.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Viz Resources You Should Know: Visual Capitalist

Here’s a new addition to my highly-curated resources list: Visual Capitalist. I occasionally write a 60-second data tip describing a particular resource, including why I think it’s cool. And I link each of these tips to a resources list on my website.

What is it?

Visual Capitalist is an on-line publisher of data visualizations. Their aim is to make the world’s data more discoverable. As the name suggests, the visualizations primarily focus on markets, technology, energy, and the global economy but also on education, healthcare, and the environment using public sources of data including government entities (i.e. U.S. Census data, FRED, etc.), intergovernmental organizations (IMF, World Bank, etc.), or established thought leaders in their respective sectors (think tanks, non-profits, corporations).

Who’s it for?

Anyone who wants to understand or show information on markets, technology. energy, healthcare, education or the global economy. They allow much of their original visual content to be used by others. In many use cases, this can be done for free. (See more info on using their content.)

Who’s behind it?

Visual Capitalist is independently owned, with its founder, Jeff Desjardins, as a majority shareholder.

Why I think it’s cool

Their visualizations can be quite engaging with high production values. You can share them on social media for free. Sign up for a free subscription on any page of their website to get one in your email box each day.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Behold the Heated Bar Chart

I’ve come across this useful chart a number of times and have yet to find a name for it. So I’m giving it one: the heated bar chart. If a bar chart and a heat map had a baby, it might look like this and be even more powerful than its useful parents. This heated bar chart shows months along the horizontal axis and days of the week along the vertical axis. Darker and longer bars on the two bar charts and darker cells on the heat map show when there has been the highest participation in hours. This allows us to examine patterns in participation. We can see, for example, that the relatively high participation in May is being driven by participation on Mondays during that month but that Monday was not a particularly high participation day during other months. We can also see that, overall, participation was lower during the fall months, regardless of day of the week.

This powerful combo chart can be used with many different types of data fields. For example, you might want to create one showing the number of participants from different gender identity and age groups to see if certain gender groups within certain age brackets are not well represented among your participants.

I made this chart with Tableau Public, the free version of Tableau. But this type of chart can be created with any number of applications. For those of you with at least a little Tableau know-how, check out the steps I took in the comic strip below.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Pop Quiz: Guess What This Chart Shows

Reposted from September 2022

Go ahead and make a guess from the options below. Then scroll down to see how your response compares with others’ and what the answer is!

Keep scrolling!

The answer: The decline in child poverty in the U.S.


As reported in The New York Times, “the sharp retreat of child poverty represents major progress and has drawn surprisingly little notice, even among policy experts.” Read the article (and view the detailed line chart) to learn more about the role of government aid in lifting children and families out of poverty.

I share this chart with you—in this way—for a couple of reasons:

1) It’s an engagement strategy you can use. Rather than present a list of stats to your audience, you can engage them in your data by first quizzing them on an interesting, fun, or counterintuitive finding from your data.

2) Bad new bias. Bad news is more likely to be reported than good news, possibly because bad news sells, according to this article citing various research. Perhaps because of that bias, we may be more likely to assume a chart is telling a negative story. This chart is a reminder of the importance of taking a broader view to gain a more balanced understanding of an issue.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 13)

“All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy interactive viz that I came across in the Tableau Public Gallery. Scroll down to see what you should steal from it.

Source: Nir Smilga on Tableau Public

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Small Multiples. To highlight each country and to allow for easy comparisons across countries, Smilga created one small chart per country and placed them alongside each other, aka a “small multiples chart.”

  • Gray comparison trends. While Smilga highlights the trend for the featured country in each chart using color, the trends for other countries are also in each chart but in a light gray. This allows us to easily compare the trend for the featured country to that of others in general.

  • Color distinguishes trend types. Recent downward trends are highlighted in red, and recent upward trends are highlighted in blue.

  • Choose your view. Smilga allows the viewer to customize the view by selecting the number of columns, time period, and countries shown.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

A Common Problem with Survey Data - And How to Avoid It

Sampling bias occurs when some members of the group you are trying to understand are less likely to be included in your data than others. Survey data is especially vulnerable to sampling bias. The data you collect is often not representative of the whole group that received the survey but rather the subgroup that was willing to complete the survey — as illlustrated in the “sketchplanation” above. So here are some quick tips to avoid this type of bias in your survey data:

  • Clearly define the group and related subgroups that you want to understand. Consider what might be necessary to collect sufficient data from all of the subgroups.

  • Follow up with those who don’t respond to the survey to understand why they didn’t respond. Did you ask the wrong questions or target the wrong audience? Apply these insights next time you are planning a survey.

  • Make your survey brief and easy to understand.

  • Finally, don’t overinterpret your survey date. Assess which types of respondents were the least likely to respond and interpret accordingly.

For a fuller explanation of types of sampling bias and strategies to avoid it, check out this SurveyMonkey article.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Add This To Make Your Charts Memorable

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Reposted from October 2019

Look at the two images below.  Which catches your attention? Which do you think you are more likely to remember?

Edward Tufte and other data viz gurus have warned us against “chartjunk” which is anything that is not necessary to comprehend the information represented on a chart, map, or graph. The idea is to get rid of distractions and focus attention on the data.

But some research by Michelle Borkin and colleagues points in a different direction.  In an experiment, they showed participants charts with and without various elements that might be construed as chartjunk like photos and drawings. They found that such images not only did not hinder memory or understanding of visualizations, they appeared to serve as “visual hooks into memory.”  Such visual hooks are important because what we perceive is based, in part, on what we expect to perceive due past experiences.

The idea of not loading up a chart with a lot of junk competing for attention is still a good one. But some images, if they are closely related to the data and connect with what folks already know, can help viewers to focus on and absorb information.

For more on how to capture attention with data visualizations, check out this data tip.

Sources:

M. A. Borkin et al., "Beyond Memorability: Visualization Recognition and Recall," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 519-528, 31 Jan. 2016.

 P. Kok et al., “Associative Prediction of Visual Shape in the Hippocampus,” in Journal of Neuroscience 1 August 2018, 38 (31) 6888-6899.

 Photo by Nery Zarate on Unsplash

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Activate Board Member Fundraising With Visuals

Reposted from January 2023

I recently came across this excellent article by The Fundraising Authority. As promised in the title, it provides a “Simple, Step-by-Step Process for Getting Your Board to Refer New Prospects to Your Non-Profit.” In a nutshell, here are the four steps:

  1. Explain how referrals work and assure your board members that no one they refer will be asked for money until they indicate a desire to get involved.

  2. Show board members how many people they actually know through a mind mapping exercise.

  3. Ask board members for referrals usually in person.

  4. Bring referral success stories back to board meetings on a regular basis.

My tip is to enhance steps 2 and 4 with visuals.

Visuals for Step 2: For the mind map, the point is for board members to brainstorm all the people they know by considering people in different categories of their lives. You can use Canva whiteboards (or a similar tool) to create a mind map that the board member (pictured in the middle) can use to add the names of people in each category on virtual post-it notes.

Visuals for Step 4: The article claims that “this is a key step. Nothing will convince your board members to bring you more referrals than hearing from other board members that have done it successfully.” You can visualize the donors whom various board members brought in using tools like Flourish to show their networks, as in this example. Scroll over the circles to interact with it and learn more. Some board members brought in donors who, in turn, brought in other donors. To make something similar, select one of the network graph templates on Flourish and fill in the data needed. (See snapshots of the data I added for the visual below.)

Links data

(used to show who is connected to whom)

Points data

(used to show groups by color, size points according to amount of donations, and add images for board members)

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

When to (and NOT to) Use a Map

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Reposted from December 2019

Maps can be a powerful way to show your data. But not always. Maps work best when . . .

1) Your audience already knows the geography.

Most Americans have a basic understanding of the size, demographics, land use, weather, and history of different regions of the U.S. It’s that foundational knowledge that makes maps like the following so effective. We think: wow, cows would take up all of the midwest if we put them all together, and urban housing would require only a portion of New England. Or, if only white men voted, just a few states in New England and the Northwest would go Democratic.

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Brilliant Maps

But when we are not familiar with the geography, maps are much less illuminating. For example, if you don’t know Ireland well, then this map does not shed much more light on the matter than the simple bar chart in the upper left hand corner. It tells us which clans are most prevalent, which is all the map also shows us unless we know more about the different regions.

Source: Brilliant Maps

Source: Brilliant Maps

2. You are showing the significance of proximity or distance.

Even if your audience is not familiar with the geography (and sometimes especially when they are not familiar with it), maps can be an effective way to show proximity or distance. This map of the Eastern Congo shows us how close armed groups (in green) are to internally displaced people (in purple). Just naming the cities or regions where these two groups are would not be effective for audience unfamiliar with the geography.

Source: Brilliant Maps

Source: Brilliant Maps

For more information on when to use a choropleth map (in which regions are filled with a color, shades or patterns to represent a value), check out this great article from Datawrapper.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.