RightsCon Toronto 2018

Data is a big part of acting in an informed way in order to make better decisions for your organization. So if you’re serious about solving human rights problems, you need to be serious about getting and analyzing data. Data analysis is a powerful tool for improving social causes, making cases to donors, and wisely using limited resources. However, many human rights organizations around the world aren’t using data either because they don’t think their organization has the technical and financial capacity, they don’t know what questions to ask, or they don’t know where to find the data. The good news is: if you have Excel and know which questions to ask, you can do data analysis!

In this workshop, participants will gain a concrete understanding of how data collection and analysis can improve the reach, resource efficiency, and impact of their organizations. The workshop will begin with a discussion of how data collection and analysis is done. The facilitator will then work on the cases of 3 participant organizations working in different areas. He will work with the group to discover strategies for how these specific organizations can frame questions for data analysis, collect the data, and then analyze the data to learn important information about their organization. He will also cover how data analysis can help organizations improve their fundraising capacities through (1) targeting fund-raising efforts (i.e., when soliciting donations from the public, improving engagement) and (2) using data analytics to make a compelling argument for a cause based on data. All participants will then work in small groups and be guided through a brainstorm on ways that they can start using data within their own organization. They will leave the workshop with new reflexes and tangible tools of how to incorporate data analysis into their operations.