Guest Post by Jake Porway, Drew Conway, and Craig Barowsky of Data Without Borders

Data drives almost every decision we make. Whether you are aware of it or not, data is being used to make better decisions about what movies you would like to watch, which route you should drive from home to work, and which new friends, jobs, and opportunities you should pursue. There is no escaping the fact that data helps us make better decisions every day, and the organizations that make data part of their DNA are going to be the ones who can make better, faster, more-informed decisions in the 21st century.

Up until now, only companies that specialized in data as part of their business, like Google and Amazon, were able to transmute their data into valuable insights. However, with vast amounts of information suddenly available through open data initiatives or generated by projects using cellphones and websites, every company, including social change organizations, can take advantage of data to make better decisions and be more effective. Unfortunately, only the first group has the resources to hire people with the skills to help make those decisions. This disparity means that there are few data skills available to the independent sector and few social change opportunities available to the data science community.

We at Data Without Borders are closing that gap by connecting expert data scientists with high impact social organizations to help them improve their missions through better uses of data. We help organizations with their entire data pipeline, from data collection, to managing large streams of data, to doing data analyses and building new tools around data. We are not, however, hired-gun analysts who sweep in, do the work, and then leave. While we provide data services to get organizations up and running, we also focus heavily on helping organizations build their data skills so that they can remain data-driven on their own.

Because not everyone’s data needs are the same, we work with organizations on a number of different levels, from short-term weekend events to yearlong fellowships. We’re thrilled to be hosting one of our weekend Datadives in DC with the Independent Sector NGEN Fellows where we’ll have local data scientists teaming with social organizations for a weekend to help them understand their data better. These events have led to amazing results, huge excitement within both the data and social change communities, and have even started driving new data policies in organizations from nonprofits to the United Nations.

We are incredibly excited by the advances we’re seeing as a result of partnerships between the data community and the independent sector. We’ve watched our teams build data collection tools for organizations in less than 24 hours that would have otherwise taken 12 months. We’ve seen social organizations completely reshape their projects and start building full-time data teams because of our work together. We’ve seen the United Nations issue a call for data as a fundamental cornerstone of development thanks to our work with them.

Sound exciting?  Then you've already answered the question of whether your organization should be data-driven by yourself. Now it's time to discover what questions we can answer together.