A Data-Driven Charity Learns That Numbers Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story

Collecting data is a good first step in charities’ efforts to measure their results and improve programs. But sometimes the meaning of the numbers isn’t clear, and organizations need to dig deeper and seek feedback from the people they serve.

Found in Translation, a Boston nonprofit that trains low-income bilingual women to become medical interpreters, learned that lesson early on.

The group carefully tracks the economic well-being of the women who complete its program. During its second year of operation, its data showed that the amount of money graduates earned per hour spiked. Yet at the same time, the amount they earned each month was increasing only gradually.

Maria Vertkin, the organization’s founder, panicked: “At that point I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is all a big illusion.’” Her vision of success was for participants to increase their income as much as possible, and she thought the numbers were a sign that the nonprofit was failing its clients.

The charity gathered a group of graduates to ask them about the discrepancy between the rates of increases in hourly wages and monthly income and what the organization was doing wrong.

The women said that nothing was wrong; they were turning down work. That answer perplexed Ms. Vertkin. Didn’t they want to earn more money, she asked the graduates.

“They were saying, ‘No, no, no, I used to need to work 60 hours a week at minimum wage just to make ends meet,’” Ms. Vertkin remembers. “‘Now, I can earn the same amount of money in 20 hours, and I can go to my son’s soccer games. I can finish a bachelor’s degree I started and thought I could never finish. I can take care of my elderly father.’”

Ms. Vertkin says she and the group’s other leaders were interpreting the data through their own life experience, which didn’t include raising children or caring for older parents. She says she’s proud that the organization didn’t gloss over the numbers they didn’t understand and instead learned from the people the group serves.

Says Ms. Vertkin: “Something we saw as an alarming thing, as a failure, actually was an indication of a much better, bigger change than we were even aiming for.”