TrueBearing Events: Spring 2015
TrueBearing is pleased to announce several exciting workshop opportunities coming up at two statewide conferences next month.
May 13, 2015: Join us at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington.
Dr. Nathan Brown of TrueBearing will present Moneyball for Nonprofits: Bringing your Strategic Plan to Life through Evaluation. Moneyball is the story of a ragtag baseball team that found itself unable to compete with big teams in terms of talent or finances–so they used the predictive power of carefully selected data to chart a startling and remarkably successful new path. The “moneyball” approach to strategic planning has come to the world of nonprofits. This workshop offers a practical understanding of how you can revitalize your nonprofit’s strategic planning using the emerging principles of evidence-based decision making (EBDM). Drawing on real-world examples and practical tools such as the free online Decisional Strengths Index (DSI), this workshop will offer insights that you can put to work right away to improve the way your organization plans and makes decisions.
May 18, 2015: We’ll offer two workshops at the Nonprofit Practices Institute Annual Summit in Chelan, Washington: […]
Useful Stuff: Community Coalition Action Theory
We do a lot of planning and evaluation work with community-based and professional coalitions. Today, we’d like to share a great, useful model of coalition development that informs our work.
It’s called the Community Coalition Action […]
Moneyball- coming soon to a boardroom near you!
In case you somehow missed it, Moneyball is a 2011 movie based on the book by Michael Lewis. Based on a true story, it depicts a baseball team, the 2002 Oakland Athletics, that found itself unable to compete with teams that had three times their team payroll. Facing the collapse of his club, manager Billy Beane realized that relying on the traditional insights of scouts simply wouldn’t result in a competitive team given the budget the A’s had available.
Instead, he turned to the most unlikely of advisors, a statistician who never played baseball but who had a deep understanding of two things: 1) what measurable events best predict wins (primarily runs scored), and 2) what individual performance statistics predict those runs. Using the power of data, Beane could identify low-cost/high impact players that scouts overlooked. The result (spoiler alert!): this radical “Moneyball” approach rocketed the underdog Oakland A’s into the playoffs– at a fraction of the salary of the teams they competed against.
It’s an inspiring story, with potential application in many fields (no pun intended!).
The Moneyball approach is starting up in several sectors: you may have heard of evidence-based policy (government) or evidence-based practice (medicine and mental health). We prefer “evidence-based decision making,” characterized by a potent strategy to make effective decisions through the use of data.
The ideas in Moneyball relate to key decisions that leaders face. […]
Drug-Free Communities visualize their impact
We’re always on the lookout for data being used in engaging and accessible ways, and this data visualization is a great example.
It’s not just […]
The Opportunity Index
We’re always on the lookout for great sources of useful data, and particularly sources that visualize information in visually arresting ways. So we are really pleased to be able to share one such resource: the Opportunity Index. The Index is a website sponsored by the national coalition Opportunity Nation. Offering snapshots of the educational, economic and civic opportunities available across the country, the Index is capable of drilling down to the state and county levels to provide a remarkably nuanced picture.
Fair warning: Do not click on the link to the Index unless you have some free time, because I promise that you will find it difficult to tear yourself away from this fascinating site! […]
Has the time come for Moneyball for government?
Tying funding for social programs to their effectiveness seems like a no-brainer. Sadly, however, genuine evidence-based decision making in policy and budget priority-setting in federal social spending is all too rare. Evaluations are often required in federally-funded social programs; however, the standards of evidence have often been unclear or lacking altogether (Sorry, but using client satisfaction scales as your sole measure of success is a poor way to measure effectiveness!). On top of that, since performance is rarely considered in funding decisions, little incentive exists for programs to change and improve in response to evaluative feedback.
An effort to rectify this situation began in the Bush II years— but even then, less than .2 percent of all nonmilitary discretionary programs were held to rigorous evaluation standards. Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
That’s a particularly disturbing figure when you consider that, according to Ron Haskins in the NYT, “75 percent of programs or practices that are intended to help people do better at school or at work have little or no effect.” One way of interpreting this shocking figure is that in the absence of evidence-based decision making, a massive amount of funds are tied up in supporting ineffective programs that could be invested in promising alternatives. […]
