Demographics by Candid

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  AshleyButler Posts: 9 ✭✭✭

  

  August 2023

  We have been thinking about it and are working to integrate the Candid demographic questions into our grant applications. This year we started asking for population served using the table question feature. We did not ask for board and staff info since we were relying on organizations to 1) have a Candid profile and 2) update it/fill it out to pull board and staff information as part of due diligence. So far, we've learned that many organizations don't fill in that information, which is why we'd like to incorporate the Candid questions into the application itself. Just some general thoughts:

  1. How to best word instructions for all types of scenarios? I've already reached out to the Success Team for advice/direction :)
  2. Is asking organizations to fill out board, staff, and senior staff info for 5 demographic questions PLUS asking for population served for those same 5 demographic questions (via GLM tables) making our application too long and cumbersome? Thinking mostly of organizations who don't currently utilize Candid who would be filling out a lot of tables manually.

  Love to learn from others who are already using the integration or are planning to!

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  TramKieu Posts: 7 ✭✭

  

  September 2023 edited September 2023

  We are also in the beginning stages of looking into how to incorporate Demographics by Candid. We started to update our application form and questions in 2021 before this initiative was launched. Mostly to broadly ask if nonprofit partners were measuring demographics of their constituents served and their staff/board. This application revamp and deep dive eventually spurred on strategic conversations with our board to look internally at our organizational culture, mission, and own personal understanding of DEI. We've had a few retreats and still in the process of creating shared understanding of DEI, and so our new application is on pause for now.

  Conversations with board and staff have brought up the questions of:

  • If we are asking these questions of others, are we as an organization going to share our own demographics?
  • What are we going to do with the demographics info?
  • What about smaller organizations that don't have the capacity to measure demographics effectively?
  • It's not just about reporting the data, but how do you get the data and then what do you do with the data? How can we support better data collection?
  • How do we make data collection less burdensome?
  • If our goal is to streamline the application, are these demographics questions going to replace other questions?
  • Each foundation has their own grant process, how do we start conversations with other local Foundant users to shift towards promoting the usage of Candid profiles?

  Would be interested in learning what other organizations are doing with demographics and data collection!

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