How can we up-skill charities to gain insights from data?

For many charities, the past decade has been a difficult time in more sense than one. So it’s no surprise that doing more with less, and keeping pace with heightened expectations, have become major challenges for trustee boards and management teams. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) UK Data Service of Essex and Manchester Universities recently hosted an event designed to explore how civil society organisations might use innovative data methods and tools to increase impact. The day looked at opportunities and challenges for professionals working with administrative, monitoring or evaluation data, including hands-on training in open source data visualisation software.