From Executive Director, Brianne Dornbush:
It seems as though everyone is interested in data these days. Whether it’s big data, personal data, statistics polling data, it’s data, data, data.
And don’t get me wrong, I really love data too. But the reason is that data is another way to tell a story.
One of District Bridges’ core values is being impact-oriented. We’ve adjusted this language a bit over the years from solution-driven to action-oriented to impact-oriented and the reason for these shifts is because you can have lots of action without real impact. You can try to develop solutions but to what end? What’s the impact of those solutions – does your solution solve a problem? Does it create another problem?
As a nonprofit, we receive many grants from the government, and every grantor we’ve ever worked with is interested in quantitative data. The number of hours worked. The number of people served. The amount of dollars deployed. All of these data points are valuable and help us tell the story. But there’s a lot that data doesn’t tell us. And that’s where our value of being impact-oriented ties into our value of storytelling.
One of District Bridges’ ultimate outcomes is for businesses and individuals to have self-determined outcomes. We want them to have agency and ownership of the future they are creating. We are simply here to support them in achieving their dreams. Being an impact-oriented organization means that oftentimes what we define as impact may look different than our grantors. That’s why when you peruse our annual publication, Intersections, you’ll see stories and articles mixed in with our statistics from 2023.
Yes, it’s important to see the dollar amount we gave away to businesses through our Small Business Grants- but what did that grant mean to that business? What impact did it have on their well-being and the longevity of their business? Is it more impactful to see how many hours our volunteers contributed, or to read about how a volunteer feels their experience with District Bridges has affected their day to day experience in their community?
At District Bridges, we know connecting folks to the stories that make our communities unique is just as important as the number on the report.