DataKind UK: March DataDive Programme

Overview

DataKind UK is looking for organisations that have questions about their services, beneficiaries, or programmes that they would like to explore, to join a free, three-month ‘DataDive’ project.

The project will see organisations matched with skilled, volunteer data scientists, and has a pro bono value of roughly £30,000.

• DataKind UK is particularly interested in hearing from organisations tackling inequality in education.
• The project starts in November and culminates in a main weekend event on 23 and 24 March 2024.

What information are they looking for?

1. The organisation’s mission or goals.
2. The challenge(s) they are facing e.g. ‘We don’t know if we are successfully reaching all of the young people in our area who need our support’
3. What questions they think could be answered by their data e.g. ‘We want to know where deprived young people in our borough are, and if we are reaching them all’
4. What fields of data they have collected, down to the column names or categories of fields. E.g. ‘We collect name, age, postcode, gender, ethnicity, and free text feedback from about 2,800 young people who took part in our support programmes’
5. What a successful project would look like for them. E.g. ‘We would know where to focus our outreach efforts to make them most effective’

The more information you provide, the more they can support you - but it doesn't need to be perfect! Here is a wonderful example of a previous application from mentoring organisation The Brilliant Club.

If you’re struggling to think about whether these big questions can be answered by your data, you can also take a look at this framework for data projects by Eddie Copeland.