Tie me to the mast. And don’t release me, no matter what I say.
These are roughly Odysseus’ instructions to his crew before their ship passes the island of the sirens. Odysseus knows what awaits: seductive, alluring siren songs that will lead them astray and to their deaths.
Your journey might not be as perilous, but make no mistake: you and your community will also face distractions that can cost you valuable time and potentially jeopardize your entire change project.
Fortunately, you have access to an effective weapon: data.
But you must use it wisely. For the siren’s song is also data-based. It is designed to lure you into making quick conclusions based on superficial assumptions that can be devastating to your mission.
In part 4 of our series, The Funder’s Guide to Systems Change, we dive deep into the sea of data you will encounter and find the undercurrents that will safely guide you to shore. In this article, we deal with data segmentation.
That is, the noble art of taking a metric like “number of participants in your program” or “infant survival rate” and splitting it into subcategories that give you a more precise and nuanced picture.
This can involve characteristics such as race, gender, or socioeconomic status, or geographical subpopulations like regions, municipalities, or neighborhoods.
There are countless ways to segment your data. And for each split you make, you will find new insights that can improve your results and thus increase the value of the money you invest in your change project.
Series: Funders Guide to Change
As a funder, donor, or investor, you play a special role in systemic change. You are the one who points out the overarching goal and assembles the team that can make the necessary change happen.
To succeed, you must ensure that the goal is clear, your community is in sync, and that you consistently measure the development that takes place.
In this series, based on Adam Luecking’s book Social Sector Hero, we go through eight key strategies that can help you build an effective, system-changing alliance.
If you want to read Adam Luecking’s book in its entirety, you can download it for free as a PDF here.
Silence the Siren
Let’s illustrate this: In a municipality, 93% of students pass the final exams in Danish and mathematics. This places the municipality in the top third in the country. And all is well, the siren sings.
But if you delve a little deeper into the data, you discover that the pass rate at two of the municipality’s schools is around 80%. This means that one in five students fails Danish and mathematics.
And when you closely examine these two schools, you see that they have the highest percentage of students with non-Danish ethnic backgrounds. This leads you to question why these students do not graduate at the same rate as their peers and to develop a strategy that can help the children who are struggling.
Now the siren is silent. She knows she can’t fool you anymore.
Think Incrementally and Target Your Strategy
In any context, there will always be those who fall below the average. These are the ones who especially need your attention. With data segmentation, you reveal inequalities and open the possibility to create unique strategies for each subpopulation.
You can also ensure that each strategy is culturally and linguistically adapted and that it takes access barriers into account. This way, you can optimize your programs to best suit the groups you work for.
Think incrementally. That means working towards your goal through a progression of many small steps rather than single giant leaps. Learn along the way, and adapt each of your steps to the various target groups.
Four Examples of Metrics
People can be categorized in an infinite number of ways. You need to find the ones that suit your change project based on your unique circumstances.
Ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and disability are four examples of parameters that are always important to be aware of.
Some people will always have more opportunities than others by virtue of their skin color, gender, upbringing in a resource-rich family, or the fact that they are not limited by a mental or physical disability.
Those who are dealt a poorer hand from birth often do worse in life than those who are dealt a lucky hand. For example, children from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack the support, access to books, and overall resources that their better-off peers have. Therefore, they often lag behind when it comes to learning.
Data that makes you smarter about the composition of your population enables you to take these differences into account and increase the impact of your change project.
Learn from Adam Luecking in Copenhagen
How do you create measurable social change across sectors?
Adam Luecking has been dealing with this question for two decades. And in September, he is coming to Copenhagen to share his experiences.
Adam Luecking is the CEO of the American company Clear Impact, which advises philanthropic and political leaders on creating systemic change in cross-sector alliances.
In his book Social Sector Hero, he presents a framework for systemic change – consisting of eight sub-strategies.
Understand the strategies and find your way to create social progress.
You can meet Adam Luecking at Impact Insider on September 18 at 9am and again at 1pm at Lygten 39, 2400 Copenhagen NV. Register here.
Inequality Accumulates
And when you are well underway with segmenting your data, remember also to combine it in new ways. For one thing, you become aware of the specific disadvantages that affect women and people of non-Danish ethnic backgrounds.
But what does the picture look like when you combine the two factors?
We might call it the intersectional nature of inequality, or we might just state that inequality accumulates. If life’s path has a few more bumps when you are a woman, a child of refugees, or born with a physical disability, what does the path look like if you are a female wheelchair user with Syrian parents?
At this point, you have caught the point: Dive deep into your data. There are almost no limits to how much you can break it down and how much smarter you can become.
And remember, you can meet Adam Luecking in Copenhagen on September 18 and learn more about how to segment your data. Read more here.
