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Genie Gratto, Meghan Hess & Nathan Gasser: Nobody Reads Your PDFs
Formatting your reports and research in PDF may bore your audiences to where they refuse to read your stuff. Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference helps you assess what’s best for your nonprofit’s content, including interactive formats. They’re Genie Gratto at GWRITES; Meghan Hess from Campaign Legal Center; and Nathan Gasser with Report Kitchen.
Salim Sawaya: Map Your Data
Salim Sawaya shares ways to visualize your outcomes data on maps, which can revolutionize how you think about and deliver services. He has free and low cost mapping tools. He’s from Esri.
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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into Erato carrot itis if I saw that you missed today’s show. Nobody reads your pdf ce formatting. Your reports and research in pdf May bore your audience is toe where they refused to read your stuff. Our panel from the non-profit Technology Conference helps you assess what’s best for your non-profits content, including interactive formats there. Jeannie Grotto at G, writes Meghan Hess from Campaign Legal Centre and Nathan Goss er with report kitchen. Then map your data. Salim Sawara shares ways to visualize your outcomes, Matt Data on maps, which can revolutionize how you think about and deliver services. He has free and low cost mapping tools. He’s from Isra on Tony’s Take to the Nukes, Responsive by pursuant full service. Fund-raising data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing by Wagner CPS guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations made easy Text NPR to four four four nine nine nine Here’s nobody reads your pdf ce from the twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of nineteen ninety si. That’s the twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference. We are in the convention center in Portland, Oregon, and this interview, like all our nineteen ntcdinosaur views, is brought to you by our partners. ActBlue Free fund-raising tools to help non-profits make an impact with me Now our Genie Grotto, Meghan Hess and Nathan Gosar. Jeannie See? The closest to me is communications consultant at G writes. Megan has his digital manager at Campaign Legal Centre, and Nathan is president and executive chef at Report Kitchen. Jeannie. Meghan Nathan. Welcome. Thank you. Radio pleasure. Your topic is, uh, it’s a good one. Interesting. Nobody’s reading your pdf ce published audience friendly research and reports. Um, let’s start down the end there, Nathan. This is, uh, this is a trouble area. We’re going through a lot of time and expense to produce surveys, reports, research, and nobody’s reading it. Yeah, sex. Exactly. Right. Way being this interest in this topic up for being working with agencies and organizations and foundations for years. And exactly we said they will produce in some cases, spend two, three years and spend multi millions of dollars in research. And you’re determining. Actually, there was an article published. What if the title was? What if the solution to all our problems was locked in a piela? Somebody was reading, and it’s sort of the point Is that like, it’s not just like, oh, no one’s reading my work It’s no one’s reading work that could potentially, you know, changed the world. And it’s really bringing that up impact to this work that we’re we’re trying to address. Okay, uh, now it was This was originally titled When I first read it. Nobody’s downloading your pfc published research and reports people actually read What was the metamorphosis to nobody’s reading your pdf, but was too technical downloading or what? Uh, Meghan, can you share Will shed a light on this. It was mostly that the NTC folks, we’re helping us to edit for tea to bring more people into Russian. They head thoughts on the wording. Okay. Something provocative. No, but they were the same idea. As you know. If people are downloading it, they aren’t reading it on DH. That’s really what it is. Just about getting eyes on stuff Okay. Um, so let’s is there a problem? Let’s start. Jeanie is there? Is there a problem with the pdf format? Inherently? Oh, absolutely not. I mean, I think the pdf serves a really important purpose and and offers a way to present some of this material in a consolidated way that people can have. The issue is really thinking about audience and really thinking about why people are trying to put the information out there and making sure that those audience members are able to access exactly what they need to do the change in the world that an organization would hope they would dio. And so so, yeah, so it’s It’s not saying, Let’s not do PdF So it’s really all about let’s think about the content and think about the way that content is being delivered and make sure that it’s reaching the folks that we wanted to reach. Okay, so maybe pdf is not the best format to convey your your world saving research is that it could be. But there could also be other audiences that might need a shorter, more snack, oppcoll way of looking at some of the content, or you might be trying to create, you know, move people to action in a particular way, and they’re not necessarily going to move toe action through, you know, reading a fifty five page report. So So if you all identified different constituencies are different personas that consume data in a different way. Yeah. So? So in the session, I was presenting a few different examples that we’ve had at my organization Can be legal center on DH. The first step of when you’re gonna put research and information out to the world should really be Who is this information for and who do we want to consume it? And what do we want them to? Tokyo. So, like, free states, journalist is going to consume information. I want information very different format than a social science researcher. Sure. So So Yet putting this research out there Do we want a journalist to pick up on something? In which case we might want to pull out the three fax that we think are the most scintillating fax that a journalist might want to talk about? And do we want to put that out there in some way that’s more eye catching than buried. Fifty pages into your pdf and maybe it’LL supplement the pdf so that they can then go deeper or contact your issue expert. Or maybe you have a constituency you’re trying to reach. That’s not going to open a pdf at all and this vital information for them. For instance, we I have put together a bunch of information for returning citizens who want to know about their rights to vote. So people with felony histories and the laws are different in fifty states. For how Who is able to vote under what circumstances? And if you are looking for your particular state and your particular circumstance, you’re not going to read that information in the pdf. So how do we get that information in front of the exact right person? Okay, dahna. So, Nathan, so is our our first. I gotta wrap my right mind around this because you guys ever think about this. You all pardon me? Not you guys. You all have been thinking about this for a long time, and, uh, well, I looked at it for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I have not been thinking about it solid for the for the for the all those weeks. Uh, and my hearing Is this what we start with? What’s the purpose of the research and and who we want to have consuming? Exactly. It’s actually the way we began. So what’s our goal? Why do we have this when we have this report to begin with? Exactly. You just summarize. Probably the first five minutes. Ten minutes of talk, which was Okay, Good. I’m glad the first five minutes, not the last one, you know, is perfect. And that’s how you started. You know, the point is not what technology tools do we have available? The point is, who’s the audio snusz and who were trying to reach. And then once we reach them, what do we want him to do? What actually wanted to take Weare talking with someone after the session? About about measuring impact? You don’t measure impact with how many tweets we get. How many page using we have. How many people looked at it. We measure impact with how many laws were changed. How many people were able to vote who run before, how maney, You know, real impact in the world. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re trying. You have to start with to say what we’re trying to take. What actions do we want? These audiences, once we’ve identified them to take and what tools are they gonna need? And we take that action, you have to start at that level before you know it can really look at all the different mirriam technical tiles decided I would be most appropriate. Help us identify some of the potential audience is that we might be producing content for yes. So you said you mentioned a bit ago social science researchers, and that’s actually a great point. There are, uh, there are cases where where you know, the entire audience of, ah, body of research is other researchers now in its And the point is just to see the next step of research. And in that case, you’re going toe, you know, trust that someone’s going to sit and read through a you know, one hundred page pdf. That’s OK. They are motivated to do that. That’s not the case for you, for everyone, for most of them, in-kind of organizations that you would expect to see it in ten. They’re not necessarily right. You’ve speaking to social signs researchers. They’re probably going, you know, often one step more towards the general audience with that with other organisations. And, you know, so you want to look at our someone would be motivated to read through, you know, several page three or four page instead of two hundred, you know, Is it someone who’s going to be motivated to interact with Cem Cem data or download the data themselves and, you know, work with it that way, If someone has wants to see the information on a map and they want to zoom into their county that there’s countless examples of, you know, Megan mentioned one where oppcoll you really only care hyre about, you know, one fiftieth of her data, right? It’s the state that you live, you know. So the ability to cut away the stuff you’re not interested in is, you know, is huge. And that’s almost not possible with video because you’ve got page after page after page after page of on There’s no, you know, sort of got cutting away that that’s something like a basic Web page with a little bit of interactivity can bring. It’s time for a break Pursuant the art of First Impressions had a combined strategy, analytics and Creative to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. That’s very book on donor acquisition you get at the listener landing page because you want to make a smashing first impression on your potential donors. That listener landing page Tony dahna may slash pursuant capital P for please. Of course, this is a live listener loving the pasta’s pleasantries the plod classed Oh my God, the iconoclast plod class for first love The love goes out to the live listeners. Thank you for being with us. I’m glad you’re with us today. On this day that you’re listening live that I’m not in the studio alive but you’re alive. So the love goes to you and the plot class Pleasantries poured Class provoc room. I’m so glad that over thirteen thousand of with you of with you are listening on the plot classed that you’re iconoclasts If you’re If you’re on the plot class, you’re an iconoclast and the pleasantries and present trees go out to you. Thanks, Thanks for being with us Applied Class listeners. Now let’s go back. Teo, Jeannie Grotto, Megan Hesse and Nathan Goss er with nobody reads your pdf ce Jeannie. What are some other potential formats besides the written report? Well, I mean, I think one of the things that is such a huge trend right now, rightfully so in all communications and storytelling. And that’s a really big deal. And so a lot of researchers air turning two interviews and trying to tell stories through that research. And those stories can be extracted and they can be either extracted as video clips. They can be extracted, as you know, kind of, you know, even explainer videos, you know, with, like a little bit of animation, things like that. There are many ways of expressing those stories, and you know, if those stories can be great and they can be really impactful, and they can move people to be ready to make change. But if people can’t get to them, then they’re not going to make that change. And sometimes, you know, you might have a document or a report that has, you know, multiple audiences. For example, you might have one that you have to turn into your funder, and your funder is very interested in what happened over the course of the body of research. But you also might want tohave, for example. Policy makers perhaps make a policy, you know? So, for example, say you were doing a report about safe streets and you wanted local policy makers to be able to read it and read the stories that are in it and really, you know, start implementing different policy than exists in a current community. We know that one of the ways people move is through stories and that you know that tugging at their heart and sort of getting to their emotions is going Teo going to be in some ways more effective than just data and the data is important than the data backs up those stories. But being able to sort of isolate those stories Teo get people emotionally involved will help organisations make that change a little easier in a little faster. Okay, that’s related to what do you want people to do with Derek Lee? Is this a donation or is this more research? Right. It’s just, uh, awareness by a funder from four hundred. Exactly. Okay, Um, see, Megan, where what else can we talk about around this topic and sort of like before we go to the workflows, you have weight. You have method of strategies around workflows getting content from researchers into something. Get interactive format. But is there more we can we can touch on before we get to the workflows portion? I think the thing that’LL add is ahead, like three or four people come up after the session to say, How do I convince my colleagues that this is worthwhile by, um, I I think that our organization serves particularly good example of this because my colleagues are mostly attorneys and policy experts on the information that they consume is from pdf. So you know they are looking at stuff that’s out there, either. It’s government data that they’ve downloaded in a pdf form, and they’re analyzing it. Or it’s research that’s put out by colleagues and other organizations. And it’s a report, and it’s a Pdf Download it, like other social scientists were talking about. They are the audience for BTS for many times, and so Teo convince them that maybe our output we should consider other avenues for Supplementary Avenue is something that’s a struggle for a lot of a lot of folks, and I think with tip is that you don’t have to go all or nothing. You can put the information out there as the pdf, but then you can extract the information that you want to get in front of the right eyes and supplement with that. And so that’s one way to convince them that, you know, this could be something that doesn’t take away from the work that you want to put out there and only adds defected Supplementary and we’re repurpose ing And think of the energy we’re saving from having to create new content when we can produce this in a different format for lots of different audiences. Sure. And then, of course, you know, if it’s not appropriate to be putting out that pdf based on who you’re trying to reach and that’s just going to be in a wasted effort, then you know you need to talk them through the same thing. If thatyou thought process that you’ve gone through if like who is this information really for, and how are we going to get in front of them? Follow-up. I mean, I also think it’s really this is a place where metrics are really helpful And so, you know, being able to say, Okay, here’s the pdf And now, you know, maybe taking one little bit of the report and kind of creating one small interactive piece around it and sharing that and then being able to say, Okay, here’s here. The statistics around that particular piece say it’s a video. Here’s how many shares that’s gotten here, the platforms where it’s been shared on DH and really being able to serve, set that against the download. And then if you can take that interactive piece and track not just that it was shared. But then, if you can get beyond that and even figure out what actions were coming out of that, that you can help make the case along the way that these incremental steps are really useful. And then the more you’re able to make that case, the easier it is the next time around. Oh, for sure. Yeah, Break, break the barrier. That Okay, I’m glad I’m I’m glad you brought up buy-in back-up because that’s its critical and could be. You know, if you’re if you’re the sole advocate of something different, you’re you’re fighting it uphill battle. You need allies and the hyre up they are the better or the board, at least at least in number. Maybe maybe you don’t have the higher up. But if you have numbers among your peers, you know, then you can start to make the case. Okay. Okay. So, Nathan, let let’s let’s talk some about these workflows that I’m not sure I understand completely, but you’re gonna help me andare Listeners understand workflows forgetting content from researchers and authors into interactive web format. Yeah, So does this mean So it’s it’s important to look at where, you know, along with the buy-in question is, you know, what can we what steps come we implement that are going to be, you know, achievable. And if you’re asking people to radically change what they’re doing, it’s going to be a harder sell. And so if you could look at, say, Windows, a researcher gathered their data and work with it. And, for example, if a researcher gathers their data and produces a little chart in Excel or something like that, and then sends that on to the editor, you’ve lost the ability to do something interesting with the rest of the data in interactive with data because the researcher has not passed on all of that data. They sort of sliced it away and left it in excel and simple little tools like that. So the question of, you know, win in the process do we need to get involved into say, Look, we’re going to save you time. We’re gonna ask you not to make these graphs anymore and excel. And we’re gonna ask you to just turn the data, overdo it, you know, put them right into a tool that allow you to let the visitor to the website You interact with the data on their own things like that. Then you’ve got the data in a way that you can, you know that you can work with it without having Teo oppcoll towards. You know, if you similarly, if you have on article or the even the body, the text body of the work go right to a designer who’s going to produce a very sort of fancy and attractive but hard to work with, you know, production file or publication file, there’s gonna be really hard to get that back onto the web in a way that was Jean you mentioned, you know, be like skimmed and snapped and sliced in two smaller doses, You’re gonna have this big chunk of, you know fifty pages. That’s really hard to work with. So that’s the sort of workflows thing where we’re trying to say, If you try to go in and say everyone, stop what you’re doing and do it a completely different way, it’s gonna be a really hard sell it in, Say, here’s at this point instead of just throwing this file away, just copied over to this other department and they’LL let them work with that. And then you can keep doing what you’re doing That’s making was saying, You know, you don’t you know, You don’t say stop cubine completely, but you want to say Let’s try to get into the spots in the workflow that we need to pull the pieces that we need to show really the advantage of of giving somebody you know, certain more direct access to this data. D’Oh any of you have recommendations for tools that are available? Teo, help the public, uh, sort through data. Are there such tools? Another are What are they? Yes. Oh, we know. Among us. Yeah. So there’s no way we’re actually talking with someone who wanted to do basically an interactive charter graphic. So, in any case, she had some kind of of the life cycle of, ah, of an ecosystem that, you know, it was a very complicated graphic, and it it worked well in pdf. But you only because you could zoom into, like, five thousand times and see these tiny little you know, words. Um, so you know, there’s a tool, for example, called info Graham, that allows you to create that kind of interactive graphics in-kind zoom in and zoom out and just present that in, you know, kind of a one one step things that you know that works nicely for interactive graphic way of sharing info Graham and focus. Graham. Yeah. Phone in program. Okay, way Haven’t one of the things in in full disclosure. I represent a company that produces a product called Report Kitchen that does the exact same thing that we’re talking about, which is take a document that starts is a pdf and take it all the way back to having all the texts and the graphics and everything extracted and produce a Web page you could work with on add interactive video or, you know, visualizations and things like that to it. So that’s Ah, that’s another option. If you want to have sort of retain all of the information because in many cases, you know, it’s easy to say, Well, you throw away the stuff people don’t want. Well, in some cases, people want a lot of it. So, you know, being able to convert it all and have an easy step is something that we’ve put a lot of energy into this this report kitchen product that we work with. I would still have a good amount of time together. Another five, six minutes or so. What? Uh, what else did you tell your audience? That you’re not sharing with non-profit radio listeners? Sametz Amy, you lower our speaker are piela. Please get a little feedback. What about what else is there? So one thing that we did in our session was way actually distributed worksheet through the room to help people start thinking through the reports that they’re working with and what they can do with it now, like this is something that you can put in place. No matter what the status of the report Is it something that’s already been published? It’s out. There is a pdf. Let’s go back to it. Pull out the most interesting fax and make a chart about it or make it, you know, easy infographic that could accompany the report online and put that information front and center in front of people. Or maybe there’s a report that still in the brainstorming stage where you can like Nate was saying, Insert yourself into the process now early on and say, Hey, I think we could do something different with this this time s So we were trying to bring it home for people that you know, we’re putting all these in for these examples in front of you of waves that we’ve done this in the past from simple to complicated. But this is something that you can take from this conference back and do right away. This is something that you can start implementing, no matter where they you know who you’re working with. What stage of the reports that you’re working with is This is something that you can do and take away from the conference and and feel like you accomplish something having come all the way out here to go to Portland, Was this a hand out O r re sources or an online resource we can share? There is. Yeah, there’s a pdf. The thing of all the ways already a pdf has its place. It does. And yes. So we’re planning Teo, share the link to that. That worksheet is part of our community notes for that session. Okay, so where where people go for the community notes. How does that work There is? Yeah. You go on the antenna app every every session and on the site. If there is a link to the community notes and a cz wella sze to some additional resource is I believe so. Yeah. Dahna all their dahna cider on the Appia. You don’t have to remember the girl. Okay, Okay. Very good. Uh, so we still have some time together. What else? What else? Uh, don’t hold out on non-profit radio listeners. What else did you talk about? You know, the other thing that that I would say this was another question that came up kind of after the session, but there were some questions about it along the way obliquely, but really one of the things that I think non-profit folks tend to fall down a little bit on, mostly because everybody is stretched for time and resource is. And all of that is really thinking through the audience and going out and doing even the very most basic user and audience research. And so you know, one of the suggestions that I have, I think that can be really helpful is just finding a couple of the key people in the audience is that you’re looking at. So you know, whoever you’re trying to target, going out and just asking them some questions about how do they consume information? Where do they consume their information? You know, it doesn’t have to be a really intense, kind of persona building process or a really intense German process. But normal folk and formal focus group kind of questions are really helpful on doing that. You know, kind of with your audience is either the people you serve, the people that give you money, you know, whoever it may be policy. Ah, policymaker, Policymakers, staff member, You know, somebody like that. Just getting them on the phone and ask them some questions is one of the things I think that particularly non-profit calms and non-profit tech people often here is somebody will come to them and say Nobody can blank so nobody can find anything on the Web site. Nobody’s reading this report. Nobody is, you know, and usually that’s often based on some anecdotal Um, and that’s fine. That’s pretty much human nature, you know, people sort of extrapolating from the thing. So my thing is, you know, you can also use that in reverse, go out and get your own and dahna data and have that available to help make the case and to get that buy-in. And I think that’s really important and can be a first step even for a non-profit that doesn’t have the budget for user research on DH. It can be something that just doesn’t take a time of time. So it could be easy to dio. Okay. Okay. Anything else you wanna share? Way got sometime. If anybody wants to add, what else did you do this seventy five minute session. So I know there’s more we’ve only been at We’ve only been talking for about twenty four minutes, so uh, yeah. Much follow-up with you said. I think it’s really important to listen. And I think there’s a lot of a lot of folks that you do the same thing they’ve been doing kind of over and over. Or or that they see other people doing you say white. And this, well, this organisation does. This one’s age doesn’t This one’s a bit of it. It doesn’t mean that that’s the right way, you know, just because a lot of people are doing it or a lot of organizations doing it doesn’t make it right, right? Yeah. And so make it popular. So listening to people and finding out, you know, again not just listening to the complaints. Because if all you do is listen to complaints going, get steered, you know, in circles and circles and circles. But it but going out and just, you know, proactively finding out. Does this make you put a little bit of effort and say, Does this graphic make sense to you? Can you Can you find what you want out of this? Does this piece of text makes sense to you? Does this video make sense to you? Like you know what which he’s going to motivate you, which is going to give you the resource is that you need to take the action that we wanted to take. You know, just again. Like you said simple audience research as it was a lot better than just kind of listening to your You listen to the same voices he always hear Meg and I’m going to give you the wrap up. Got about thirty seconds. Motivation. Positive. Positive conclusion. I’ll just say again that this is something that anybody who works in communications or marketing or fund-raising for any organization can do no matter you know how. How stubborn a ship you’re trying to turn you, Khun, make small, incremental changes that will put the you know, this information in a more accessible format than Petey Jeff. And maybe you’re not going to be doing a big Web, native mobile friendly website instead of the report to begin with. But you, Khun, do small things with little budget and not a lot of time that will make a big difference in how your audience consumes that information by putting that forethought in before you actually just throw the pdf on the website. This is something anyone could do. All right. Thank you very much. They are Jeannie Grotto communications consultant under G writes Meghan has digital manager at Campaign Legal Center on Nathan Gaza President and Executive chef at Report Kitchen. Thanks to each of you. Thank you, Tony. Thanks for having pleasure. My pleasure on thank you for being with our coverage of nineteen. Ninety si the non-profit Technology conference. This interview and all are nineteen ninety si interviews brought to you by our partners at Act Blue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits Macon Impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break when you see piela is their accountants, for God’s sake, You know what they do? The account that everybody knows that sexy PPI is like being a dentist. Everybody knows what what it’s all about. Do you need one? You need help with your form. Nine ninety is the time to change Audit firms get that fresh look. Perhaps they’ve got a deep practice for non-profits. They’re growing it. They want to grow up more. And you know what? Insider in the firm help them grow. Why? You may ask why? Because they’re sponsoring non-profit radio. You have to ask, You know the insider partner, He’s the partner yet Hooch Tomb has been on the show. Give him a ring. Check them out. Wagner cps dot com Now time for Tony Steak, too. Same videos last week because I’m away. So in the airforce during the Reagan years, I was a missile combat crew commander. First, I was a deputy missile combat crew commander, which would be a d m C C C. Then I was an M C C C missile combat crew commander. Of course, the U S A. F has its a c r o N Y m s, um, and as a d m triple C and then a m triple C. I worked in l double sees launch control centers, many of them spread throughout western Missouri. There were in other states as well. Uh, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and I think Kansas so much sure about that. But in our years, definitely those other states I named and what do we all do? Their we controlled nuclear missiles. You have direct control over ten missiles, but you got auxiliary control over another forty. So if your friends and the other capsules get wiped out. You can take over their missiles on. How do you do all this? You do it from the l double. See the launch control center, which is in which is down below on the LCF launch control facility. And it’s next to the L C E B Launch control Equipment Building. You can see all this on my video. It’s a video tour of the launch control Center. Actually, the tourist just the downstairs launch control center and adjacent next to it the L C E B launch control equipment building. Take a tour with me. Ah, the video tour is at twenty martignetti dot com and that is Tony’s. Take two. Now here’s map Your data from the twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of nineteen NTC. We’re kicking off our day to coverage of the twenty nineteen non-profit Technology Conference. We’re at the convention center in Portland, Oregon, and my guest now is Salim Sawara. He’s manager of S Orry. Welcome, Salim. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you. Pleasure to have you. Thanks for kicking off our day to coverage. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Your topic is putting your data on the map techniques and tools for impact. So we’re talking about visualising data, the outcomes data or just visualizing any data geographic, many different kinds of data, any kind of data that has location involved, whether it’s related to where the people are, the places that were trying to serve, if an assist, Where are we working, where partners measure me, measurements of impact and outcomes and ultimately different ways to visualize data to engage people communicate, you know, engage with our community. OK, could be fund-raising Data also could be donorsearch donorsearch members, volunteers indicators that would help us to identify where we would find more of the people that were working with that. We’re getting donations from that air, volunteering for us, etcetera. All right, As you can hear, the crowd is approving of your of this topic and he’LL take it. I’ll tell you what’s in the background is we have the main where the main stages maybe a hundred feet away or so on DH. There’s there are ignite session’s going on where people are doing five minute quick, quick topics on and the crowd is approving of that as well, as well as what Salim has to offer. Congratulations. Um and Oh, and I neglected to say thie outset that this interview, like all our nineteen ntcdinosaur views, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue free fund-raising Tools for non-profits. Teo, help them make an impact. Of course, we’ve got our ActBlue swag. I’m don ing it, etcetera. So thank you for that indulgence. Gotta take care of our premiere sponsor and they’re right next door. So if you’re not at nineteen NTC, come check him out after afterwards. ActBlue. Um okay, so we, uh I hear a lot that we’re overloaded with data. There’s there’s so much available. It’s hard to sort out what’s important. So I certainly resonate with the topic. Resonates with me trying to visualize it in you in your cell, in your session topic you say you’re people can revolutionize the way they deliver service asses by by visualizing their data. That’s a revolution. That’s ah, that’s a strong claim. Revolution. Not just not going to be an evolution. How do we revolutionize and has this relate Teo delivering services? Yeah, well, I mean, today we’re dealing with super complex problems, right? That deal with lots of different issues, many of them very complex into related. And it’s very hard to get a a full picture of what’s going on, where we’re working, where the people are. We’re trying to serve. In many ways, the power of geography and GS is in allowing us to integrate different kinds of data that otherwise would be very hard. Teo, Understand in one place or in one picture? Yes, yes, is geographic information. We have jargon jail on non-profit radio. No problem. You can keep me. Keep me in check. I will keep you out of Joe. Yeah, but geographic information systems is a technology that leverages the power of location and geography too. Bring data together, integrated and allow people to do different kinds of analysis, visualization. And you know, many different kinds of applications to support their work. What we see in the non-profit community especially, is the use of js helping organizations and how they identify where the place is or the people that were trying to serve or assist. Understand? Where are my resource is? Where is my work today? How how best can I align the resource is that I have with the places that I’m trying to target on DH then you know, using joyous and location data to help them measure the both the outcomes and the impact of their work. Whether that’s by collecting data, surveys of beneficiaries or actually measuring the impact of work that they’re doing or leveraging other kinds of data socioeconomic demographic data as proxies to help measure the impact of the projects and investments that they’re making. Okay, there’s a There’s a lot to unpack there. You’re an expert in data visual legation. I am not sorry you might marry trainable, but happen Alan after now. No, no, no, no, no. I wanted That’s a terrific overview is just a lot to unpack Shine we got. That’s where we got a half an hour. Um, all right, so we have a, uh I’m going to take our listeners of small and midsize non-profits so they all have a c e r N on. Let’s say, maybe they’re even using their their serum data base to help them with their program management. We’ve got a panel on that coming up, so I know that that’s eminently doable. What What do we like? What are the symptoms that were, I guess let’s start with this trouble areas. One of the symptoms that were not managing our data or we’re not getting the getting out of our data. What we need so that then visualisation can help us. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think whether you’re talking about donors or members or volunteers or beneficiaries, it’s really hard to get a real clear understanding of what is the make up? What is the distribution? What are the You know, where do these people exist? There are concentrations exam. You can you can you can export from your CR M to an excel she and that’ll give you Ah, I mean, I guess you could do a graph of ah bar graph of the most ten most common zip codes or something exactly. But But that doesn’t tell you as much as I would for sure, seeing seeing that kind of data on a map to allow you to see our all of my people concentrated in one place. Do we have gaps in places where we wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be? Are there are there opportunities in the landscape of where our donors or members or volunteers maybe that we could target and try to fill in gaps that we see and visualizing. Okay, And this certainly applies to local organizations. You could be mapping within a county or state, or you could be mapping the Earth. Absolutely. And that’s I mean, there’s there’s organizations working at all scales, right? So whether they’re at a neighbor murcott level trying to work on the you know their civic association and improving their neighborhood or global organizations who are working on, you know, really large, complex global issues context. The context that location provides really helps. So what kinds of questions might we be asking that way? Don’t feel like we’re getting a decent answer to now. Yeah, so a lot of the and that’s a great way to frame the discussion, because what are the kinds of questions that people ask? That location helps them to understand. One of the big things that we see a lot in the nonprofit world is am I am I getting the resource is to the places that where they’re most needed, right? Am I delivering services to the people who have the most acute need, um, I seizing those kinds of opportunities to have the biggest impact that I can have. Where could I be? Prepositioning resource is in order to make the most accessible to the people that I’m trying to serve. A really simple example. Would be organizations who are looking to build some sort of infrastructure, whether it’s a well or a latrine or a school or a hospital, where the people that need those services are they already being served by existing infrastructure? Or is there some opportunity or need to build some new infrastructure in a place that will reach a population of people that didn’t have access before? So then, what do we need to have so we can start to visualize our data the way, the way you’re encouraging, really, the it it blows down Teo having some element of location that you’re capturing when you’re collecting data on an organizations work, and that could be very precise addresses or coordinate locations where it’s easy to get that kind of information or where it’s being tracked at that level. But it could be just as easily you know, a city state country combination that allows us to Ah, you know, record information at a county level at a state level at a country level, depending what level you’re trying to map. Exactly. So what? The questions are you tryingto task and answer. So knowing that everybody’s in the same county, if you’re in that county and try them out, that county is not gonna be helpful. Exactly is right here in these streets. But what if you’re in a state and and you’re trying to map a state, then county alone could be could be valuable. Exactly. If your foundation trying to decide. Like where the places across the country across the world where our resource is, would have the biggest impact, right? You don’t need to map things down to the address level. You’re not targeting households. You’re targeting broader geography, Sze, where you want to focus your efforts. If you are a community level non-profit you wantto deodorant on its street addresses blocks that you want to focus on this segment of a trail, this segment of a stream, whatever the focus of your work, maybe you want the data that you’re working with to be very granular. Okay, sure. So you need that you need some level of geographic data. Um and then all right, so let’s assume that we have mailing address and we’re a state organization and we want to want to see where our density of service beneficiaries are on. We have there. We have their street address because we are social workers occasionally make home visits etcetera throughout the state. What we do next. So there’s Ah, a number of different processes. But effectively, the process that one would use is called geo coating, where your matching those addresses with a database of addresses and streets. Teo actually put points on the map that are associated with the addresses that may exist in your spreadsheet or your database. So we need this interim step. You can’t go just from the street address to Teo to a mapping tool. That’s what geo coding is, how you go from an address to dahna map. Okay, that’s the process of matching the address with the actual physical location. Okay, and you’ve got some resource is tools. Some geo coding tools that we’re going to talk about exactly are tools that help people do that. There’s a number of them out there that support that work. So it is. It is simple is exporting from your CR m into one of these geo coding tools. If you’ve got to see us via a spreadsheet of data, that has been I know CSB come separated values. Even I know that one. Sorry. Don’t put me in jail. Yeah, if you have a spreadsheet with data that has addresses essentially just uploaded into this geo coding tool, you run the geo coding process and you end up with a shape file, which is Ah, Geospatial data file format that allows you to put data onto a map. Okay, that sounds Aah! That sounds really It’s really straightforward. It’s very common. There’s a number of different tools out there and allow you to do it. But that’s first step, right? Is just getting your data into a form or can actually be visualized in a map in, you know, any number of technologies. Um, And then once you have that, then it’s a matter of what are the other kinds of data that I want Teo Layer with my my information that gives it context. What’s the appropriate basement that I want to use my looking at. Do I want to see? Imagery? Is the backdrop for my data to get context on. What is the landscape that we’re looking at? Do I want a kind of more of a neighborhood street map that gives me a feel of what’s the neighborhood like and what the transit routes? There’s many different kinds of base maps. There’s also lots of other kinds of data and information. Census data, a CS American Community survey data, various kinds of socioeconomic indicators that would give context. Tio, What’s the level of population in a given area? How much income do they have? What are the kind of needs that they might have with regards education, health access, etcetera? And there’s lots of data out there on things even around. Where do people spend their money, right? Are they donated ng to charities and high numbers in this area versus that area? Are they spending time volunteering with different organizations more so in this area than another area? So all of that gives context. Teo your own organization with data, the crowd approves again. Time for our last break text to give you get there. Five party male, Many course by texting NPR to four four, four nine nine nine. That’s the five part course that is going to dispel myths around mobile giving. It does not have to be low dollar. You don’t have to go through phone companies. It’s not expensive to get started. It’s all in the five part email. Many course text. NPR November Papa Romeo to four, four, four, nine nine nine. And we’ve got lots more time now for map your data with Salim Sawara. So So I’m now starting to take even greater shape. I mean, I’m imagining that these other data overlays will impact thie. The way you’re visualize the data so circles or, you know, ever shape maybe large or small colored. They might be different. Different shapes were means everything. So you can bring all these different layers into one one one dimensional map. And a lot of the data is popping out just as you’re looking at different points on the map. Exactly. Okay, okay. Overlaying different kinds of data gives you an understanding of how things relate in a way that you really could never get. If you’re looking at it in a spreadsheet or a report or some sort of narrative form, much richer. Sure. Okay, let’s spend some time talking about the different geo coding tools. So So where do we start? What you have? Recommendations, I hope specific tools and resource is Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s geo coating is one of the kinds of things that people do with JS. There’s tools that allow you to do that in a Web environment. Their desktop mapping tools that support geo coding butt joke owning is one of the one of the processes are analytical. Process is that someone would do with G s. Okay, well, let’s start with Suppose you wanted to do a desktop. You’re gonna keep this simple initially and you want you want it for yourself in your office. You have some tools you can recommend. Yeah. I mean, for the tools that ezri offers. We have a non-profit program where we make our technology available for free to non-profits. There’s small administrative fees and effectively with with every technology. Arc js isra I said s story. It’s OK. You made it sound like I’m a kayman institute or something. All right? And ah, we eso inter desktop software. There’s Ah, there’s Ah, a couple of different utilities or tools that would allow somebody to basically point a geo coding tool at their data set, and it would return a bunch of dots on a map. The same thing could be done in a Web tool that we have called our joyous online, where somebody would basically upload their spreadsheet. The geo coding process would be run against it and same output. You’d end up with a bunch of dots on a map or whatever your data, maybe. Okay, um, are there others you can recommend? Ah. Besides, every tool there’s, there’s lots of other energy A cutting things out there. Google Maps does geo coding. I think open street map has a G o coder. There’s lots of different options out there. I’m not as familiar with others as I am with ones that we try to be Galateri. Yeah, sure. No problem shouting out the every day, every tools, though. That’s fine. Okay, Um all right. That’s a That’s a great, you know, explanation of the process way. Have a lot of time left with another ten minutes or so. Yeah, And what else? What else is in this topic well on geo cutting really is is the tip of the iceberg, right? It’s how you get started and getting your data onto map. Well, where it really gets interesting is toe whatyou were highlighting a minute ago, right where you start overlaying different kinds of information that give context to your data, understanding the socioeconomic profile of neighborhood kids, where you may be working, or where your volunteers are where your donors are. One of the big things that we’re talking to a lot of people about this week or that they’re interested in, is how do I find more people like the donors that we’re working with today? Or how do I find more volunteers like the ones that were working with? All right, um, and this is a very similar thing to what businesses do with location information right tto find customers. But in the non-profits world, it may be a Organizations have a database with their donors or their volunteers. They put those onto a map. They’re able to identify what air the demographic characteristics of those individuals based on their location. And then it’s really easy to go and ask questions like, where are other places where we find the kinds of people that I’m wanting to engage rating people. Exactly. So that’s one of the big things that we see non-profits doing with our technology, whether that’s defined more donors or volunteers or more of the beneficiary population that they’re trying to support in some way. Now, commercial sites are doing this cos retailers exactly its banks, health care, how Starbucks decides where it’s going to put its next store. We’re named the business. It’s what I can imagine. I can imagine the rich data they must have about location of the what, what, what makes a story successful? Exactly, and and the kinds of characteristics of people that they find to be their best customers. Yeah, it’s effectively the same sort of question for a non-profit. You’re just trying to find donors or members or volunteers or beneficiaries, as opposed to customers. Come and yeah, it’s the same sort of thing. Also, that big logistics companies, ups, FedEx and others air using tio figure out how to get their packages. Two people in the most effective way on. That’s another. That’s interest of how non-profits could use Julius. All right, say a little more about what? Ah, package delivery service ups is how it’s using. So you mean like planning their daily planning the route for an individual truck each day? This is all this is all geo GS. This’s a GS problem, right? There’s in the numbers. All site won’t be exactly accurate. But you know, UPS has millions of packages that they need to deliver each day. They have tens of thousands of vehicles and drivers that are doing that work. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of locations that they’re delivering to and many different, you know, kind of factors that would affect which trucks and drivers they assigning jobs, too. GPS helps them tio analyze that problem. Ah, optimize the distribution of deliveries across that network of vehicles and drivers and get things to the places that they’re trying to go as quickly and efficiently and effectively as possible. There’s, you know, non-profit organizations who are running big logistics operations is well. We do a lot of work with U. N World Food Program, who faces many of these same pro problems trying to identify you know how to get re sources to the places that are needed as effectively and efficiently as possible. Where do you preposition resource is so that they’re accessible to people when they need them. But you could have many similar problems that smaller scales for non-profits who need Teo, you know, get volunteers to all of the places in their community that are needed to help with the trash pick up day or whatever the whatever the issue of the concern. Maybe so a lot of the data that you might be might be mapping is not data that you have that you have. So now we’re going beyond but might be data on economic socioeconomic status of a community, a block, a town might be racial distribution, shin education profiles, health care, healthcare outcomes. Absolutely. All right, so you know a lot of external data. So you then you map what? You’re what? You’re where your services are to where they’re needed exactly. And we take advantage of the open data movement that’s taking place around us, right? There’s lots of data that’s available from government at a national level, a state level, a county level. We invest quite a bit as a company and trying to make that open data accessible and usable for people so that they don’t have to do all the work of kind of bringing data together and putting it into, ah, a form that can be used in a GS. But, um, yeah, Isra and many of the different partners that we worked with in the non-profit space and government are making data services available that people congrats and mash up into, you know, Web maps with their own data and see, you know, beyond themselves. What is the landscape that they’re working in, the people, they’re trying to serve all of those things. But what’s your opinion of the Facebook data? We’re digressing now. Data data collection policies not sharing with non-profits, for instance, donordigital. When someone makes a gift on Facebook, you know they won’t reveal the data. I’m not sure I’m really even familiar that so if somebody’s making donations through face-to-face xero non-profit, you can’t get the you can’t get contact information. You can’t get the person’s email. I’m not sure they give. They might give Now. I figure they must give name, but non-profits have a have a big information void there. It’s It’s very, very hard for them to acknowledge that gift, so I’m not even sure that I know they don’t give email. I’m not even sure if they give name, and that’s hardly unique. But yes, that’s a problem. Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I’m not. I wasn’t really aware of that. But it’s ah. You know, I guess I could imagine it’s a bit of Ah, Catch twenty two situation, right? Terms of the privacy concerns and things that they must be facing, but at the same time, providing a service in a way that really is is valuable to non-profits. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a challenging situation. I’m not sure not sure I have a clear opinion. Okay, let’s go a little broader than around the social media platforms. And not just not just Facebook, but and and, uh, whether they share data, you know, you’re you’re very much an open data. Uh, company way sport. Open data will benefit from open data. So the social platforms that don’t make aggregated data available they holding his proprietary? Yeah, that’s you know, I think that’s in in many ways, that’s, ah, business model that is somewhat sort of foreign or separate from the work that we do our roles. We built technology. We work with government customers who are working with sensitive data healthcare organizations who have private information that they can’t share, and they need technology that allows them to work in a secure, more closed environment. Many of our customers want to be ableto leverage, open data that’s coming from other organizations or make their own data available to others. Martek, Nala ji supports that. The view that we take the approach we take his toe is to provide a platform that allows people to make their data available in the way that they want to and that makes sense for them. Um, we don’t take any right or ownership or license of data that people put in our platform or using our platform were simply providing technology that allows them to use their data in the way that they want to. OK, Salim, we have about another a minute left or so. So how would you liketo wrap this up? Encourage people? Yeah, I guess the I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and your audience, and I just would say that you know, there’s a lot that changed with mapping and GS in the last you know, five years. It’s really easy to get started. It’s accessible to anyone. It doesn’t take a master’s degree or a phD to be able to get started using JS and spatial analysis. And there’s a lot of opportunity and value for non-profits to start doing simple things, like putting their date on a map, overlaying it with other kinds of information and getting a better understanding of where they’re working, who they’re working with, where the opportunities for them to have a bigger impact. So many questions could be answered that that they’re having difficulty with now. Yeah, all right. He’s Salim’s AWA manager at Isra. Don’t say it s Terry. It’s spelled S r I. It’s Ezri. Um All right, Selene, thank you very much. Thanks so much stunning. Real pleasure. Thank you for being with our coverage of nineteen. Ninety Si non-profit Technology Conference This interview brought to you by our partners at ActBlue free fund-raising tools Teo, help non-profits make an impact. Thanks for being with us next week. Mohr goodness from the non-profit Technology Conference. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you find it on Tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits. Data driven and technology enabled. Twenty dahna slash pursuing capital P Bye weinger CPS Guiding you beyond the numbers ready cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made easy Text. NPR to four four four nine nine nine. Ah, creative producers. Claire Meyerhoff, Sam Leave Luis is the line producer. Thie shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scots Diner, Brooklyn’s. That’s right, Scotty. 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