Big Data

CASE STUDY: Helping a Chicago Social Services Agency Create a Plan for a Sustainable Future

Keshet is a faith-based organization that provides a wide range of services for children and adults with intellectual challenges. They found themselves in need of a strategic planning process because they had a surplus of ideas and clients, but lacked the management and governance structures to keep pace with the […]

Showing Clients How to Put the Metrics We Uncover to Actionable Use

I’m Danna Reuven, a senior analyst at Measuring Success. My job entails working with clients, their stakeholders, and (of course) their data. I grew up in California and went to school in the Midwest. I’ve always supported nonprofits, and in my undergraduate studies, I wanted to learn how nonprofits might […]

Case Study: Helping a Hollywood Synagogue Maintain High Standards

As a house of worship with strong cultural traditions, a prime location in the heart of Los Angeles, and deep ties in the community, Temple Israel of Hollywood seems to be doing everything right. Still, synagogue leaders didn’t want to rest on their many successes. In late 2016, they hired […]

Moving Dallas Neighbors Up the Ladder of Financial Success

In the Dallas/Fort Worth area, one in four households do not have sufficient assets to live for three months (at the federal poverty level) should it experience a loss of income. With this startling statistic in mind, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) brought an initiative called the Working Families Success […]

Helping The U.S. Soccer Foundation in Its Quest for Healthier Outcomes for Children

Soccer for Success provides activity and health education for more than 40,000 children in 130 different communities in 26 states. The U.S. Soccer Foundation started the program in 2009 to use soccer as a vehicle for social change and provide communities with the same opportunities for soccer that other organizations […]

Linking the (Big) Data Silos for Collective Impact

By Sacha Litman Funders are investing billions of dollars trying to move the needle on a variety of social issues. How do they know, though, if they are funding the right people, programs, and organizations to achieve their desired goals? Take at-risk youth. CEOs of after-school programs and education non-profits […]

Upending Tradition: Focusing on the Collective over the Individual

By Hannah Feinberg Romick For many years, social scientists have been working to understand how communities, individuals, and organizations intersect. It used to be that a majority of community members went to church on a Sunday, listened to the an- nouncements about upcoming activities, and met up with friends and […]