Data. Is it really a part of your strategy?

There are strategies that really think about data and there are strategies that don't. When you think about your advocates and allies. When you think of all the thousands of transactions that reveal intent, interest, need or solutions. Do you have a strategy that focuses on using that to make things clearer? Do you have a strategy that leverages the most formative trend of modern culture?

It is not easy for organizations to make this shift. However, good organizers have always known about tracking activists, campaigns, votes, neighborhood support, grant performance, etc. Making the leap with the new data trends is as essential today as basic organizing efforts were 100 years ago.  Being a good organizer is not just communication at scale of mass media but organizing at that scale. We need to update our thinking, planning, tools and concepts of data management to fit this new world.

From the NOI review of the Obama campaign... Transparency of measurable outcomes across a greater audience creates accountability and actionable data - sorely needed measures for many campaigns. When data is shared from volunteer to volunteer, volunteer to staff, and staff to senior management, institutional culture shifts. Outcomes become incentives for self-motivation and are socially compared, in real time. Volunteers and staff can visually assess their contribution to the campaign through charts, graphs and leader boards. Teams can track their impact together, and records from week to week and month to month are accessible and analyzed.