Note from Beth: A few months ago,  Ann Emery wrote a guest post about her Top 10 Spreadsheet Secrets which was an amazingly practical and popular post.    Ann inspired me to set up a tumblr blog called "Now That's A Spreadsheet" showcasing examples from nonprofits.    But being a nonprofit data is not just about being an Excel ninja, it is also about visualizing data and being a chart master.     When Ann told me she has lots of secrets and time saving tips for charts and offered … [Read more...]

I've been facilitating a peer learning group with Packard Foundation grantees during the past year with a goal of improving measurement practice for social media and based on my book, "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit."    Each organization is working on an action learning project that is a small, doable measurement project that applies the frameworks and steps in the book.   Each month, we go deep into a practice step - both on the individual practitioner level as well as the organizational … [Read more...]

Last month, Stephanie Evergreen wrote an awesome guest post called "Six Steps to Great Charts" with lots of practical tips for using the Excel chart feature to visualize your social media measurement data.  The six steps: Step 1:  Which Chart is Best? Step 2:  Use Color To Emphasize Step 3:  Delete Data You Don't Need Step 4:  Directly Label Step 5:  Save As A Template Step 6:  Annotate For step 1, she suggested using Juice Analytics chart chooser tool.     I wanted to learn more about what … [Read more...]

[slideshare id=21621705&doc=measuringwhatmattersmay2013final-130521135935-phpapp01] I've been curating resources on nonprofit measurement over on Scoop.It, with eye towards collecting useful material related to social media and social impact measurement. Last week, I came across this excellent deck and blog post from the Knight Foundation's VP of Strategy and Assessment, Mayur H. Patel.   The presentation was prepared for the Miami Philanthropy Conference and addresses a familiar issue:   … [Read more...]