6 Reasons to Engage Members in Data Collection
- When programs incorporate data early and often, they are reinforcing the important role the member plays in improving data quality. Since this translates to real resources for your program and the people your member serves, your member can feel good about being the very important link to knowledge and insight that they are.
- Your millennial members love feedback, and collecting data on their service is one way to see the impact of their day-to-day hustle in the community.
- You’re teaching your members valuable, marketable skills that they can take forward into their future endeavors. More than 60% of members go on to work in government or non-profit settings, sectors that practice the very data skills they’re picking up. Resume polished, check!
- Many members are building unique one-on-one relationships during their year of service, and regular and timely data can help them see the overall progress of small, daily steps.
- We task members with addressing some our toughest, most entrenched issues – there will be ups and downs to their service year experience. Fact-checking can help re-frame our perspective when things get tough.
- At the end of the year, when the data is tallied and presented in aggregate, they can see what role they played in the bigger picture of what the program has accomplished as a whole.
It’s participatory evaluation, or as OnCorps CEO Catherine Settani analogizes, “Everybody in the pool!”
