Learning about Learning

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Since 2021, Ajah and Powered by Data (PbD) have been collaborating with the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) to improve evidence-informed decision-making and learning in the nonprofit sector.  One of our primary goals was to develop a strategy that could be shared with the sector. To help us prepare for the work of building that strategy, which we called the DEAL (Data, Evidence-use And Learning) Strategy, we decided to explore the landscape and talk to people who have worked for years with data and evidence for various purposes, whether to inform funding decisions, craft policy solutions, connect people around an issue, evaluate outcomes or simply illuminate the context of a particular issue. As part of the DEAL strategy, for over two years, we conducted interviews, and we met in a learning circle with funders. Coming out of this process, Ajah and PbD wrote a report that describes key findings and takeaways. The report is being shared widely now to inform and to prompt further thinking about how to approach this complicated topic.

We aimed to explore what we thought were the knowledge-sharing barriers and develop strategies to overcome them. In our exploration of the landscape, we focused on funders because they could play a pivotal role in supporting shared learning and promoting more effective knowledge mobilization. There are few external incentives for nonprofits to share what they learn and many don’t have the resources to do it easily. Funders, both public and private, possess those resources and arguably, a unique capability to transform the way data and evidence is shared. Academia provides a compelling example, where major advancements in knowledge-sharing have been driven by academic funders who introduced open-data mandates in their funding processes. Just as these academic funders spearheaded positive change, we recognize that funders in the nonprofit sector can intentionally facilitate collaboration and support initiatives that lead to broader knowledge dissemination and impact.

So, what did we find? 

  1. There isn’t agreement on the problem: People we spoke to questioned whose learning and evidence-sharing challenges should take precedence: funders alone, funders and their partners, or partners exclusively. However, some funders agreed that there is a need for knowledge sharing to allocate their limited resources more effectively. And nonprofits agree. Understanding and addressing the learning needs of both funders and nonprofit partners is crucial to moving forward.

  2. It’s hard to share information, especially about what doesn’t go well: Nonprofits face challenges in openly sharing information about what does not work. The fear of unintended consequences and negative repercussions from funders hinders their willingness to share failure stories. This is well understood. However, its broader impacts may still be underacknowledged.

  3. It’s not how but if: Our work gave us insights into the nonprofit sector's learning culture. Recognizing the complexity, we need to take a step back and reorient the conversation We should start by asking a different question: not how to share knowledge but if we are able to implement shared learning practices. The people we spoke to believed that open-ended discussions on how they feel about knowledge sharing could lead to more fruitful outcomes, as they have different understandings of the need for knowledge sharing. Our initial perception, from what we have seen so far, is that such discussions might pose challenges and not be straightforward.

What became very clear to us is that to have a good conversation and to make solid progress on advancing learning within organizations, there need to be clear and shared objectives among a group of participants who place a similar priority on a learning agenda in their organization and have the mandate and bandwidth to execute it. As always in these efforts, having some support through a backbone (intermediary) organization or network is key to success and sustainability. This can be light touch support…but it needs to be consistent and sustained. 

This exercise convinced the collaborators (Ajah, PdD and ONN) that learning agendas are important and that sharing evidence on what works (in the form of data, reports or any other knowledge product) really does matter.  The question is how to move it forward productively. Establishing partnerships with the intermediary organizations and networks that might have experience in creating communities of practice, such as PFC, EFC, or United Way/Centaide, as well as more focused networks, such as Environment Funders Canada, can provide the necessary support and infrastructure for ongoing learning initiatives.

We invite you to join us in advancing the agenda of knowledge sharing and collective learning in the sector. Read our report, reach out to the ONN, Ajah, or PbD to find out more and to let us know if you want to support a peer learning circle that will engage in ongoing conversation about how we can advance learning agendas for ourselves and for the whole sector. Visit this site for more information about the broader DEAL project. We have also included links to further reading and advice in the report itself.  We would love to learn from you! 

Gustavo Andrade
Strategizing for Good at the Impact Partner Summit

Photo from the event’s page on Eventbrite

We spent part of this week in Chicago at the Impact Partner Summit. The inaugural summit brought leaders, consultants, technologists, philanthropists, and business owners together with the goal of advancing the mission of nonprofit education, sustainability, and equity. 

Some of the topics discussed include the how and why of setting up a PMO (Project Management Office) for your foundation or nonprofit, how to address the limitations of the consulting framework or approach,  and how to manage technology projects with an equity lens. Check out the agenda for a more complete overview of the sessions.

It was great spending time with other leaders in the non-and for-profit consulting space who are focused on the same problem as us - how to help our clients leverage data & tech for their missions. We hope this becomes a yearly event. 

Hats off to the organizing team at Three Little Birds!

Article co-authored in "Information, Communication & Society" on data justice for youth in care

Photo from Unsplash

We wanted to announce an article that we co-authored with Dr. Naomi Nichols and Kody Crowell, Data justice for youth in and leaving care, that was recently published. We are thrilled  to see this piece published  as it is uses a methodology and approach of looking at data management systems and their characteristics and effects on a social system. We care a lot about this, and it is a big part of our approach to the sector. We think that this work could serve as a blueprint for other issues in the social sector and regions other than Ontario as well and are excited about the prospect of building (and validating) data maps.

Our work with Naomi and Kody involved mapping who holds what data about youth in care and youth leaving care in Ontario - including the data management systems, the institutions that control them, and even the ‘administrators’ of those systems. Part of doing this work allowed us to explore the recent transition Ontario made from each individual children’s aid society having an individual tracking and case management system to a centralized system, and to compare the intentions behind that change contrasted with the reality of the effects the change had on the functioning of that system (which was intended to allow for greater transparency amongst different agencies). 

Our work focused on mapping all of the data that is produced accounting for a person’s experience in the child welfare system - this allowed us to better understand the data and the nature of the data, as well as how decisions are made about using and supporting centralized systems for data collection.

Check out our paper linked here and let us know what you think. You can learn more about the context for this work from when we started on Powered by Data’s blog here.

Good times at Good Tech Fest

Photo from Pixabay

Good Tech Fest, a conference focused on creating an impact using technology, took place in Washington, DC two weeks ago and a group of Ajah employees were lucky enough to attend. This is the first Good Tech Fest in-person since before the Covid-19 pandemic and there was a real sense of a community that created an electric atmosphere of connecting and collaborating. The conference advances the idea that technology has the potential to support and scale the efforts of nonprofits, government, philanthropy, and social enterprise.

Our team participated in two panels at the conference. The first panel we partook in at the conference, How GivingTuesday Collaborates with Parsa Torabian, Marc Maxmeister, and our very own Lexa Wilson, and co-founder Jesse Bourns discussed data collection. Although there is a sophisticated technical infrastructure in place to collect, standardize, integrate, and analyze data - the need to have a ‘people-first’ approach when it comes to data that focuses on engagement and understands different needs and requirements is still necessary.

The second, Infrastructure for an Efficient Sector Panel with Tris Lumley, Teri Gartska, Phil Chow, and Ajah’s David Goodman, discussed the sector’s need for shared infrastructure. The “days of one system or one standard to rule them all are over” said Goodman. Shared infrastructure and collaborations are designed to help low-capacity organizations overcome their deficiencies, improve efficiency, and produce better results. Even more important is that there are examples of shared infrastructure being successfully implemented.

One of our staff’s favourite discussions came from Day One’s keynote speaker, Marnie Webb from TechSoup. In response to a question about tackling the often huge scopes of work our sector must face, she mentioned how important it is to separate the issue from the problem. For example, an issue could be childhood hunger - which feels impossible to tackle - but the problem is something we can work on solving. In this case, the sector and organizations could work on mapping out where meals are available for children within a community - their project Range does this. It can be helpful to think about the solution in terms of how we can make impactful steps towards solving the problem, and not get overwhelmed by the scope of an issue.

Ajah also presented the founder of Good Tech Fest, Andrew Means, with the inaugural Golden Pipe Wrench of Honour to recognize his contribution to the sector. Andrew has brought together and introduced countless community members and doers, including our very own David Goodman into our company. Without Andrew, many successful collaborations in the sector may not have been possible.

Our team had a fantastic time and connected with many like-minded individuals at Good Tech Fest. We are already looking forward to attending next year’s conference. If you would like to learn more about Good Tech Fest you can visit the website. Stay tuned for videos from this year’s event and follow to get notifications for next year's Good Tech Fest. We already can’t wait - hope to see you there!

Changing the approach for a changing need

Knowledge infrastructure for the nonprofit sector: building a new field of practice

Photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash

The nonprofit sector has a knowledge deficit. This problem and the lack of information we have about effectiveness in the sector impacts our ability to better serve people. We wrote a concept note about why we think solving the problem requires a sector-wide knowledge infrastructure paradigm shift.

As we know, there is a growing need in the nonprofit sector for more evidence-based decision-making. This is hindered in part by a collective failure to make knowledge and data more accessible and discoverable. This can’t be fixed by any individual organization, group, or platform—it’s a shared problem that needs to be addressed collectively by the entire sector.

We (Ajah) have been talking about this for a long time, and applying these concepts in our work - so we’re excited to share more about our thinking.

The field of scholarly communication is taking this approach to address similar challenges. The replication crisis helped trigger an investment of energy and attention to the structures used in scholarly comms, and how knowledge and information circulate in that sector. Most importantly, it meant the sector collectively prioritizing its own infrastructure and trying to find shared approaches.

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is one example of how a group of organizations are working together to address the issue of shared knowledge infrastructure for their domain - it’s a collaborative of major research funders that are seeking to develop shared roadmaps, funding priorities, and learn about growing this area together. This is a sustained, collective effort by a diverse global community of practitioners, which has enabled an ever-evolving ecosystem of tools and systems that encourage or enable things like data sharing and reuse - and address the objectives and challenges identified by that community for their area. 

There are many components of the research information infrastructure that we believe can and should be readily adapted to the needs of the nonprofit sector. In many ways, the nonprofit sector has many of the same issues and needs - knowledge needs to circulate among practitioners, and we need to do a better job of collectively learning.

The question now is whether the nonprofit sector has what it takes to adopt, adapt, and improve on this structure. We think it can, and we’re exploring opportunities with others who see the potential of sector-wide information-sharing and want to put that vision to use in creating a roadmap for next steps.

If you also think we should take a collective approach to learning as a sector, and the concept note one-pager, and contact us at infrastructure@ajah.ca to see how we can build this new field of practice together

What are we reading April 2023

Wow, big month.

From UX Indonesia on Unsplash

This month, we are thinking about some bigger-picture ideas in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. From what dignity, to secrecy, to better equity and diversity work, there’s a lot to dig into here. More below:

1. Is your organization acting ‘dignified’? 

The Dignity Audit Project, developed by ID Insight, was designed with the goal of “making the dignity agenda more tangible for practitioners”. It focuses on the international development and humanitarian sectors. The three main goals of the audit are: 1)helping influential actors in global development ensure they are developing systems to ‘keep their promises’ to those they serve, 2) expanding the research agenda to demonstrate what works to uphold dignity and why that matters in the work, and 3) to ensure that IDinsight is facilitating the movement towards a ‘dignity agenda’ in the sector broadly by fostering connections and building processes. 

We’re interested in following this project closely because of how it prioritises the experience of the people who interact with the actual activities of the development sector, as opposed to the experiences of a target beneficiary who sometimes only exists in the mind of well-meaning, often Western and Northern, aid professionals. 

Read more about the Dignity Audit Project, or access the Dignity 2020 Report.


2. Reviewing: Why is there so much secrecy in philanthropy?

Mark Blumberg examines the VOX article Why is There so Much Secrecy in Philanthropy - which discusses the anonymity of charitable gifts to organizations. As highlighted by Blumberg, there are two types of anonymous gifts - the first type of donors actually want to be anonymous, the second is happy to be persuaded to disclose. Blumberg shares that major donors almost always want recognition - even if they are ‘forced’ to go public with their donations. Often these donations come with agreements, limitations or restrictions, which are also not public knowledge.

Blumberg argues in favour of legislation that would requires all major gifts with restrictions on the use of funds to be publicly disclosed. He also argues that the tax benefits that come with these gifts should be reviewed. For example - should a donor still receive a tax benefit if they will continue to reap the benefits from recognition for their contributions years later? The lack of overall transparency is bad - for the donor, who will be questioned for their motives, and for charities who may have their hands tied without the public being aware. 

3. The launch of “Demographics via Candid” campaign

Finally, we’ve been interested to follow this project developed by Candid. They have recently launched  a platform, Demographics via Candid, which allows nonprofits to share their demographic information and makes it accessible and reusable by others. It strives to standardize demographic requests, formats, and questions and encourage more equitable funding practices. They have seen momentum since beginning the initiative. Given Candid’s previous approach to their data projects (which often consists of collecting & crowdsourcing data and putting it under licenses which explicitly prevents commercial use) we’ll be follow it closely to see how the information is handled. 

Jesse BournsPrototyping
Ajah goes to Coleridge Summit: we found our people!

Photo by Nathan Dumlao from Unsplash

As you might recall, the Ajah contingency - Michael Lenczner, Elle Gemma Gruver, and David Goodman -were eager to attend the Coleridge Convening Cross-Agency Collaboration for Evidence-Building at the end of March. The Coleridge Initiative focuses on building collaboratives for data sharing through initiatives like the Administrative Research Data Facility (ADRF) and Applied Data Analytics Training. We got to nerd out on administrative data at the conference, and spoiler alert, we loved it. It gave us a lot to reflect on and may have even renewed our hope in this work moving forward (maybe a little!)


It is a foregone conclusion that sharing administrative data has to happen at multiple levels to be effective. This presents challenges as different states - and often the agencies within them - are highly autonomous, with differences in staff and technical capacities and comfort around data sharing. Coleridge offered a unique space for states, agencies, and partner organizations to convene and collaborate. The aim was to share learnings and build on one another’s work - helping organizations and initiatives to stop reinventing the wheel.  Below are some of the takeaways we’ve been thinking about since leaving the convening:


  1. This work is about relationships and trust first - and technology second (a far second). 


Relationships are critical to this work because data sharing is difficult, risky and even adversarial by nature, due to all of the variations and differences found in different data sets. The only way that we are able to overcome this barrier is developing trust. Centering trust before technology provides an opportunity to collaborate instead of duplicate. Actors can work to advance existing infrastructure instead of all redeveloping the same tools. This sounds easy, but in practice it requires working together across agencies in spaces that don’t foster cross-agency collaboration (how many times have you heard the word ‘silo’ in reference to the data/communication in your agency?). Building technology and infrastructure are easy, but they can’t and shouldn’t happen until we’ve built trust and found common value.

1. To get buy-in, offer clear use cases. Finding common value propositions will help you find conspirators in the work.

Building collaborations starts with a pitch. Agencies need to demonstrate what the value will be in creating collaborations to data owners and decision makers that they approach. One way to do this is creating “quick wins” to see value more quickly. This entails creating feasible goals at first and starting small. This also means creating conditions for the value of combined data to be greater than individual level data. Defining clear use cases will help to move away from creating more ‘data mausoleums,’ where data is locked away (covered in dust and spiderwebs, probably) and never used.


2. Governance is critical to this work, but how do we facilitate good governance when many states and agencies are still struggling to evolve and collaborate?

Data Governance is key to responsible, sustainable collaboration. You might think of data governance as archaic bylaws and pedantic sub policies, but proper governance can protect data and the use of the data, while building trust and understanding among participating orgs. Effective governance needs to be collaborative, flexible, and sustainable in order to ensure equity while ensuring that it can evolve and expand as needs and preferences change over time. Some examples we like include @KYstats, @Colorado DT, and @Kansas ECIDS data trust. We need to move away from proprietary governance policies that are limited in scope and time, or tied to individual people or isolated projects. We also need to learn to be more flexible and find ways to allow people to participate from where they are at - which might not be quite ready to share data, but still wanting to participate and learn.


3. The reality is that not all States and agencies have the necessary capacities to do this work. So how do we move forward? 

We must invest in human capital -  yes, even with the AI takeover. Organizations and agencies are reluctant to share data because they can be ashamed of the state of their data and what this means for their programming. Having more people devoted to ensuring data sets are clean, complete, and well managed can help avoid this “skeletons in the data closet” problem. 

A caveat: don’t spend time cleaning the data if you haven't thought about who is going to use the data, and whether or not there is capacity to actually do things with the data (or the capacity to manage the operations and governance of data sharing). We have to be judicious in prioritizing resources for data that can actually be used and not just data we wish we could use.


4. States and counterparts in other States need to work together.

Our final point is an echo of what we’ve been saying all along - we are more capable when we work together. Sharing experiences and best practices are key to building state capacities and ensuring that data and tech can be used more efficiently. We shouldn’t be in competition - we should be working together and learning from one another. States and agencies need to collaborate with one another. We’ve been excited to do some work along these lines with the Investment Readiness Program for the Government of Canada. We are involved in work to support Economic and Social Development Canada and Statistics Canada to connect the Investment Readiness Program administrative grants data with the Business Registry to drive insights about the impact of the granting program on grantees. We’ll be presenting more about this work at the ANSER conference in May. We look forward to attending the next iteration of the Coleridge Convening and continuing to advocate around better data sharing work in general.

Ajah FinancePrototyping
Look at this: Daymark Foundation's Theory of Change

Photo by Christopher Lawton from Unsplash

One of our recent partners, the Daymark Foundation, just released their new Theory of Change for Perinatal Mental Health. This work recognizes that perinatal mental health issues are more complex than many realize. Ajah worked with the Foundation over six months to help them develop their Theory of Change (TOC) and a learning agenda for their Perinatal Mental Health strategy. 

This will enable them to tie their evaluation and measurement work to specific learning questions that will help them further develop and adapt their strategy. Their TOC focuses on the two outcomes they want to see progress in in the field of perinatal mental health - decreased severity and decreased prevalence of perinatal mental health issues. Both of these outcomes are focused on a population-level, with indicators and smaller goals to move towards these outcomes built into the TOC.

The reason we want to highlight this is because it is an uncommonly good example of a theory of change that we don’t often see in the sector. Through our work across multiple sectors, we see lots of theories of change, but it is rare to see one that articulates so well what a foundation will be focusing on, the impacts they are expecting to see, and how they will understand their success - or failure. This is something that other funders should take note of as an example to follow in their own work for how to set up their strategies and how to present them. We are thrilled that we got to contribute to part of the thinking behind this work and we are excited to see what the impact of this work might be moving forward. 

To learn more about Daymark’s work on this important topic, you can visit their website

Ajah FinancePrototyping
Coleridge’s 3rd Annual Convening on linked administrative data brings all the nerds to the yard

Photo by Silvia from Pixabay

We wanted to take some time to write about an exciting event happening at the end of the month, hosted by The Coleridge Initiative. The Coleridge Initiative is a nonprofit organization that works with governments to ensure that data can be accessed and utilized more effectively for decision-making for the public interest.

This year, the convening is happening March 27-29th in Washington, D.C, titled Cross-Agency Collaboration for Evidence-Building. As you might have surmised from the title, this year’s convening will explore the transformative potential of collaborations between government agencies and researchers that use linked administrative data to improve government programs.

We’ve been increasingly interested in the (re)use of administrative data by the social sector, and are always trying to learn about new ways to apply and encourage its use more broadly. It is an underused tool that could help improve the quality and functioning of social programs, and help us understand their impacts more generally. We often see resources not being used (or not being used as well as they could) in the sector, so we’re excited to learn more about efforts to make use of the potential opportunities in using administrative data. 


A lot of impact measurement is wasted, poorly designed and poorly carried out (for reasons well explained by Caroline Fiennes). There is another way forward for impact measurement - finding ways to use administrative data to access the outcomes of social programs and interventions. Right now, the government seems to be (unintentionally or not) holding our outcomes data “hostage” in some ways - meaning that much of the time, after we have spent time and energy designing and implementing interventions in the nonprofit sector, we don't really know their outcomes. 

For now, using administrative data is still a newer practice. It is not alway an easy tool to manipulate and it requires a specific set of skills to be effective in using it - not to mention the many difficulties in linking it and accessing it consistently. This conference is an important instance of developing a community of practice that can learn collectively about how to practice this work effectively, and how to build more effective partnerships to unlock the potential of administrative data. New developments in approaching these challenges in the sector are exciting as there are not many spaces where this is the focus. We look forward to attending! 

Ajah FinancePrototyping
New Senior Staff at Ajah

Meet the newest members of our cult.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

We wanted to take a moment to introduce the three (!!!) new senior staff we’ve been lucky to welcome who joined us at the start of 2023. Here is a bit about them and their backgrounds:

Allie McHugh is joining as a Project Lead. She comes to us most recently from the world of communications and publishing, last working with Metrolinx as a Community Relations and Issues Specialist. She has had an exciting career working across multiple industries in everything from publishing, to digital consulting, to marketing, to risk management. 

Jonah Kotzer is joining us as a Senior Manager, Data Consulting. Most recently he was at the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto, where he served as the Impact and Business Intelligence Manager. His experience at the UJA and beyond includes managing tech and data systems, process development, and digital transformation, as well as policy research and partnership management. Throughout his work, he has helped organizations to successfully create ways of understanding their impact through data. 

John Crowley is joining us as a Senior Manager, Technology and Data Consulting. He comes to us most recently from Mercy Corps, where he was working as a Senior Technical Project Manager, but his experience quite literally spans the globe. He has helped steer several international initiatives aimed at improving the development and humanitarian sectors through data and technology.

We’re excited to see how each of them is going to help our clients and create innovative ways of adding value and impact in the sector. Welcome Allie, Jonah, and John!