In Conversation with the Chinese-American Planning Council: The Journey from Collecting Data to Becoming Data-Driven

On May 5th, Wayne Ho and Edgar Pereira from the Chinese-American Planning Council joined us for the first installment of In Conversation with Nonprofit Data Leaders to discuss The Journey from Collecting Data to Becoming Data-Driven.

We’ve pulled out a few key moments we think will resonate with you below.

New technology is a change management project, not a software project.

Early on, someone told the CPC team that adopting new technology isn’t about the platform. It’s about bringing your people along. That advice shaped everything that followed. When staff pushed back on moving from pen and paper to Salesforce, Edgar didn’t force it. He piloted with four programs first, relied on program supervisors to carry the message, and built buy-in a little at a time.

Disaggregated data gets you into rooms you couldn’t get into before.

Once CPC could match its members to legislative districts, advocacy changed. Wayne described walking into a meeting with a council member and showing exactly who CPC serves in their district. When SNAP cuts were on the table, CPC could say how many of its members would be affected and how many stood to lose benefits entirely. That level of detail helped CPC go from commenting on policy to co-leading a state food security package.

Becoming data-driven takes time, and that’s normal.

A few realities came up that any nonprofit leader starting this work should hear.

• CPC is a family of ten organizations, and the work took three years.

• They started with a clean slate rather than migrating years of old data into the new system.

• Not every vendor understands social services, so look for one that does before you sign anything.

  
  

Watch the entire webinar recording below!

PS: You can explore CPC’s public dashboard and impact tour and read the full case study on what we built together here.