There are many capacity building training programs out there, but The IMPACT Fellowship is unique in its focus. It aims to teach organizations how to identify and use data to ask the right questions. Performance is important, but The IMPACT Fellowship is outcome focused.

Success in the fellowship depends on shifting organizations toward a culture of data-based decisionmaking. Participating organizations must commit an executive leader, a board member, and a key data staff person to a 9-month cohort consisting of assessment, action planning, hands-on coaching, and trainings.

 

 

Courses focus on teaching the correct skills and behaviors necessary to leverage data for greater impact. Coaches ensure lessons are applied to your real-world situations.

 

 

Program Benefits:

Increased data literacy, improved data practices, and optimization of programmatic impact through data-driven decisionmaking.

Participants will be able to:

• Select data indicators aligned with their mission.
• Determine valid and reliable data sources.
• Improve how they collect, manage, analyze, and report data.
• Use data to make sound decisions and actions to improve outcomes

 

Why now?

The complexities of today mean that improving communities’ outcomes requires a deep understanding of the multi-layered challenges they face. New Orleans has made significant advancements in using data and evidence-based solutions to approach problems, but decades of systemic disadvantage have built complex, seemingly unsolvable problems.

Data suggests that, despite our best efforts, social and economic problems in New Orleans are stubbornly persistent. For example:

1) Racial disparity in household income has increased since 1979 with inflation adjusted household income for families of color actually decreasing over time.

 

2) Employment rates for all demographics have risen since 1990, except for black men.

 

3) From 1997 to 2012, the percentage of black owned business in New Orleans nearly doubled, but the total share of receipts going to those businesses has remained stagnant at roughly 2% over that same time frame.

 

4) Though more education is generally associated with a decreased risk of having a baby born with low birth weight, black mothers with a Master’s degree or higher had a greater likelihood of having a low birth weight baby than white mothers with a high school degree or less.

 

The Prosperity Index suggests that disparities across many systems in New Orleans are, in part, due to unconscious bias and may require innovative approaches to address them.

 

Support systems designed to address problems suffer from their own challenges.

 

 

Organizations can leverage their own administrative data to reach the next level in effectively designing solutions

 

Using internal and systems level administrative data effectively for evidence-based decisionmaking involves the following considerations:

• What are the organizational infrastructures and technical capacities of those who generate and use data within your organization?
• In what contexts are data collected and decisions made?
• How does information flow within and outside the organization, and how do decisionmakers use it for planning, improvement, and measuring progress?

 

IMPACT Fellows learn to:

• Think differently about metrics, creating more measurable systems-level outcomes that are mission aligned
• Focus on outcomes over outputs
• Develop a research oriented approach to ask better questions
• Rigorously question outcomes. Support anecdotal stories with real data…or show the anecdote to just be an anecdote.
• Improve how they collect, manage, analyze, and report data
• Use data to broaden and deepen conversations within their organizations from the board to staff levels

 

How can my organization sign up?

Signing up for The IMPACT Fellowship starts with a competitive application process. Selected applicants then participate in a set of assessments to gauge their organization’s readiness. If all criteria are satisfied, an action plan can be developed which helps guide learning.

 

Click the button below to register your organization’s interest in the IMPACT Fellowship!

SIGN UP FOR THE FELLOWSHIP