A community for people using data in the social sector
Welcome to the Data Collective
What is the Data Collective?
The Data Collective is a community of individuals who work in the UK social sector, and use or want to use data. The purpose of the community is to help charities and other civil society organisations to access and analyse data better, in order to increase their impact.
The community exists to foster connections between people who may be facing similar data challenges, to share good practice, and to help organisations to share their data with other organisations, should they want to paint a fuller picture.
Members have access to peer support through our mailing list and slack channel, group workshops, and direct technical support. This support will help you to collect, use and share data in a way that maximises impact across the sector. The consultancy support is limited, so sign up ASAP to avoid disappointment!
Should I Sign Up?
The Data Collective is a community of individuals who work in the UK social sector, and use or want to use data. If that sounds like you, sign up! All are welcome from charities and other civil society organisations – whether you’re ready to share and use data, or you’ve just started thinking about it.
As part of the community, you’ll have:
A virtual place to come together, share good practice and resources, and learn how data can help in your work
Opportunities to showcase your data initiatives and to hear from others
A network of peers to discuss common challenges and share solutions
Access to peer-to-peer technical support to help with your data needs
An opportunity to shape the support on offer – we want to hear what will be most useful to you.
Why do we need a community?
Good use of data can make charities and other civil society organisations more effective, and better serve communities across the UK.
But many organisations are hampered because they can’t gather the knowledge they need about the shape and needs of the communities they seek to serve. This data gap was made clear when Covid struck. With a rapid change of circumstances, the sector responded with Herculean effort, but this response was hindered by a lack of information. This is a common challenge in the sector. We believe a large part of the solution is organisations coming together to share their insight and data with others in the sector.
This isn’t about sharing anything personal or confidential. It’s about us sharing high level information, to better understand who’s doing what, and where and for whom, and what communities think and feel about the work we do. And ultimately, to serve those communities better.
This is not a new idea. Over the years, there have been many initiatives to share data within the social sector, both in the UK and elsewhere, and this project was created because more than 40 organisations expressed an interest in this idea. Covid has bought on notable new examples from organisations like the British Red Cross, 360Giving, Turn2Us and ButtleUK. This pilot project will showcase and build on these initiatives, helping them to inspire the sector by showing what is possible.
Who is supporting the community?
This work is being supported by a cross-organisational team:
Nish Doshi
Data Collective Community Manager
Kye Lockwood
CEO, DataKind UK
Tom Watson
Freelance, The Good Ship
Nicole Holgate
Communications Manager, DataKind UK
Roz Sutton
Programme Design & Delivery, Freelance
Edward Saperia
Dean, Newspeak House
The pilot of the Data Collective was supported by Catalyst, as part of the Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Response fund
Help us make this better
Share Your Views
The purpose of the Data Collective is to help people who work in the UK social sector to make more and better use of data, in order to improve their impact. If you have views on what the community should look like, what needs it should meet and how – please share them with us! If you’d like to contribute, get in touch: collective@datakind.org.uk.
Pilot project
This is a pilot project, funded until the end of March. Part of our work is to understand what would be more useful to the social sector data folks in the longer term, and to find the funding to provide it past March! We will always have an eye on sustainability and the implications for the longer term future of the project.
Sign up!
All are welcome from charities and other civil society organisations – whether you’re ready to share and use data, or you’ve just started thinking about it.