Doing it for the kids

Hey everyone,

I'm totally new to this community. I've been listening to a few times of the postcasts for the last month and really digging them, so thought I'd jump on in. Sorry if this kind of post isn't the etiquette, or a bit long! - I'll learn and adapt quickly. If you're interested, read on and I'd love any feedback good or bad.

So, what am I working on?

Throughout a series of failures I'm working to my second success. My first success was building a charity that grew monthly income to circa US$25k, building an integrated education and healthcare programme for approx 2,000 annual direct beneficiaries in rural India. We've saved a bunch of lives and changed even more lives, and I'm massively proud of that.

The second success relates to this. A big impediment to good work is good data. Nonprofits the world over talk about making every cent count. But do they make every data point count? Data points that cost much more than a cent to collect? Usually, no. My experience of data collection in the nonprofit world is well meaning but technically sloppy due to an underinvestment in tech. I know of multiple multinational nonprofits with multiple million annual turnovers that rely 100% on bloated Excel spreadsheets for all their data management. Not cool. Not effective.

The plan

My goal is to be successful in bringing realtional data management to the nonprofit sector en mass. I see all fundraising, operations, supporter, and impact data integrated, giving teams real insight into their work so they can make real times data-informed decisions.

I've just launched my prototype with an NGO in India. We are working through the snags but it is looking good. My next step is to make it open to others - I need to re-engineer the back end to do this but should be relatively straightforward.

I'm targeting rural teachers in India, because that's what I know - I spent 12 years on my first project there. There are hundreds of thousands of teachers over burdened and needing more ongoing professional development, care, and general support - being a teacher in rural India can be pretty isolating. I hope to create something that they will find truly useful not only in the data, but creating a community where they can support and learn from each other.

Happier better supported teachers = happier better supported kids. When I make this work, I'll be able to reach a lot more than my 2,000 annual from before.

So, that's a bit about me. I've loved learning from this community so far, and can't wait to keep learning and contributing.

Peace and gratitude,