At Read to Grow, we’ve always collected data to help us understand and improve our work. How many families are we reaching? Where are our programs operating? What resources are we providing to children and families?
For years, much of that information stayed within our organization, where it helped us manage programs, understand our reach, and support grant writing. But we’ve increasingly come to see that our data can do more.
Earlier this week, Read to Grow’s Executive Director, Suzannah Holsenbeck, and Data Director, Paula Grimm, joined a conversation about how nonprofits can use their data to better understand the communities they serve—and how sharing that information can benefit an entire field. The discussion gave us an opportunity to talk about why we’re working to make more of our data publicly available and what we hope it will make possible for early literacy in Connecticut.
One of the most important shifts in our thinking has been moving beyond simply asking what our programs have accomplished. Programmatic data can tell us where we’re working and how many people we’re reaching. But on its own, it doesn’t necessarily tell us whether we’re reaching the communities that need resources the most.
When we combine our own data with publicly available information about communities across Connecticut, we can begin to ask different questions: Where are children and families facing the greatest barriers to early literacy? Which communities have access to resources, and which may have fewer opportunities? Where are there gaps between community need and the services currently available? What might those gaps tell us about where we can focus our efforts?
This broader view is particularly powerful when data can be mapped geographically. Seeing information visually can make patterns and gaps much easier to identify—and, importantly, easier to act on.
We also believe nonprofits have an opportunity to play a larger role in building the data infrastructure their fields need. Organizations like Read to Grow are often collecting valuable information simply by doing our work. We have a close view of the communities we serve, the programs we operate, and the resources we provide. Making that information accessible can help others better understand what is happening on the ground.
This feels especially important at a time when public data can be difficult to find, difficult to access, or increasingly limited. Nonprofits can help fill some of those gaps by sharing what we know. At the same time, new technology is making it increasingly possible for organizations of all sizes to turn their data into useful, accessible tools. We don’t need to be a large research institution or technology company to make our information more useful to the people working in our field.
These ideas are at the heart of a project we’re excited to share: the Early Literacy Data Hub. Launching soon, the Data Hub will bring together information about early literacy in Connecticut and make it easier for organizations, educators, policymakers, researchers, and others to explore and understand.
The Hub will initially include tools such as our library map and Book Access Index, allowing users to explore early-literacy resources and access to books across Connecticut.
Our goal is to make information more accessible and useful so that we—and others working toward the same goal—can ask better questions, identify gaps, and make more informed decisions about how to support children and families.
For us, this work represents an important evolution in how we think about our role as an early literacy organization. Our data can help us understand our own programs. But when we share it and connect it with other sources of information, it can help us understand the larger early-literacy landscape in Connecticut.
Want to learn more? You can watch the full webinar recording and view the presentation slides to hear more from Suzannah and Paula about how Read to Grow is using data to better understand early literacy in Connecticut and share what we’re learning with the field.
We’re excited to continue building the Early Literacy Data Hub and to share it with our partners and the broader early-literacy community. The Early Literacy Data Hub will be launching soon. Stay tuned for more information about how you can explore the data and use it in your own work.
