Social enterprise, Our Community, is launching a series of groundbreaking data initiatives designed to accelerate the move to evidence-based social practice in Australia.
The Melbourne-based organisation will on Wednesday launch the seventh generation of its cloud-based grantmaking system, SmartyGrants, providing hundreds of grantmakers and thousands of not-for-profit organisations access to a shared taxonomy to help them systematically describe themselves and their initiatives.
The taxonomy (known as CLASSIE – Classification of Social Sector Initiatives and Entities) is designed to underpin a range of data initiatives, including funding and donations trend analysis, benchmarking initiatives for grantmakers and not-for-profits, and open data, cross-sector and international datasharing projects.
“The goal is to get us all speaking this same language, which will provide enormous opportunities for collating and comparing data, with a view to extracting insights that will help improve social change work in the future,” said Our Community Group Managing Director Denis Moriarty.
“We want to cut through the hyperbole surrounding ‘big data’ and use it to better understand the stuff that really matters.”
As of next Wednesday it will be available to grantmakers and grantseekers via standard questions that grantmakers can add to their SmartyGrants application and acquittal forms.
“This represents a huge shift into the world of data intelligence for us and our community of users,” said Moriarty.
“The more grantmakers who use these fields, the more insights they’ll be able to collect – knowledge that in the future will help grantmakers to reduce red tape and improve decision making.
“This is the most exciting time in history for people who seek to create positive social change. We have always had the will – now we have the tools to turn our passions into action.”
Next week Our Community is also launching a new SmartyGrants website and a new SmartyGrants Help Hub, as well as the 10th annual Grants in Australia Survey, which takes the pulse of the nation’s grants landscape and helps drive changes in grantmaking practices over time.
The first generation of dashboards are due to arrive in SmartyGrants in December. The first four dashboard widgets will help grantmakers answer at a glance four fundamental questions about their program: • How busy are our programs right now? (How many applications are we receiving?) • What is our application success rate? (How many applicants are getting approval for a grant?) • Do we have enough money allocated for our programs to meet demand? • What is our submission rate? (Are too many people abandoning applications?)
Benchmarks that line a grantmaker’s data up against that of other similar grantmakers will later be added to these widgets, along with a number of additional graphs.
“Once we can line up project outputs and outcomes in a systematic way, we’ll be able to get a better picture of what truly works to create positive social change,” Moriarty said.