Published May 2025
The Data Conversation: Data learning community
Social enterprises deal with many different types of data - from data on their inventory to data on their impact, and everything in between. This learning community aims to support small and start-up social enterprises with all aspects of collecting, using, and managing data.
About the learning community
This learning community aims to support small and start-up social enterprises with all aspects of collecting, using, and managing data – examples of relevant topics include:
- data security
- data governance
- data visualisation
- survey management
- using data to inform decisions and advocacy
It's common for people to feel overwhelmed or anxious about data, worried about “what they don’t know they don’t know" or unsure about how to improve their data environment. This learning community will share ideas and tips for making your data more secure, more useful, and less stressful. Together, you'll work on identifying common data challenges, creating a safe space for learning, and supporting each other to problem solve and iterate.
About the convenor
The Data Conversation supports not-for-profit organisations, social enterprises, and other community organisations to collect, manage and use their data to support their missions. They provide a range of data services, including building data systems, developing reporting dashboards, and advising organisations on data security, governance, and visualisation.
Being a small, start-up social enterprise, they share the challenges (and fun!) of working out how best to use data to help achieve goals.
How will this learning community work?
This learning community will include:
- Five online meetings (each 90 minutes long) between June 2025 and June 2026.
- In these meetings, you'll join group discussions led by a facilitator. You'll talk about important topics like how to keep data safe, how to run surveys, and how to use data to support causes you care about.
After each meeting, we’ll create simple “Tip Sheets” that sum up the best advice, ideas, and solutions shared by the group. These will also include helpful links to guides, tools, and presentations that are especially useful for small or new social enterprises.
How to get involved
This learning community is intended for social enterprises that are small (fewer than 20 employees) or start-up (in the first 5 years of operation).
The Data Conversation are keen to hear from interested social enterprises about the topics and formats that would be most valuable for them – please get in touch via this expression of interest (EOI) form.
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