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News and Blogs > Funding success for ‘Diversity and Data Collection’ Project – co-creating a scalable digital dashboard for diversity data collection in the social investment sector

social investmentPosts - 12 Dec 2023

Funding success for ‘Diversity and Data Collection’ Project – co-creating a scalable digital dashboard for diversity data collection in the social investment sector

This blog has been cross-posted with the kind permission of the Diversity Forum 

The Diversity Forum is delighted to have secured additional funding from The Connect Fund for the co-creation of a data dashboard to reflect the diversity of the social investment sector. This project is being run in collaboration with our valued partners at For Business Sake, Clearview Research, Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, Big Society Capital, the Pathway Fund, Shift Design and Social Investment Business.

This project has been initiated in response to several requests seeking best practice for data collection around the diversity characteristics and a recognition of multiple intermediaries working on very similar goals. Our intention for the project is to improve the standards of data collection in the sector, setting expectations for best practice and facilitating a way to achieve this that is both accessible and inclusive by co-creating diversity data collection – in terms of content (what data is collected), process (how the data is collected), practice (how the data is used) and communication (how the data is visualised and shared).

We aim to do this by using a Design Thinking approach to centre individuals in social enterprises and social investment intermediaries, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds, to ensure a balance between accessibility and accountability and to ensure the data collected can be purposefully applied to improve goals around equity, diversity and inclusion. Our aims and intended outcomes for the project are as follows:

  • An accessible digital dashboard to portray the diversity of social intermediaries within the sector that can be updated on a regular basis

  • A baseline of good practice regarding appropriate questions for diversity characteristics for use within the sector

  • A user-led, co-created data collection method for the diversity of social investment intermediaries to regularly input diversity data that has the potential to be scaled for use with social enterprises

  • An evaluation report to indicate how this dashboard can feed into wider equity, diversity and inclusion work in the sector and practical recommendations for how our pilot can be scaled for wider use in future .

We are keen to engage with others working on diversity data collection to learn from your experiences and to integrate and collaborate our methods with as many others as possible across the sector. To get involved, ask questions or learn more about the project please reach out to us on [email protected].