Using Evidence to Move from Insufficient Understanding to Authentic Truth

As an impact investor, Chicago Beyond has spent years working with funders, social sector professionals and grantees to develop and implement solutions based programs for underserved communities based on data collection and evidence building.

This work has required extensive research, and over time, the organization began to take notice of a theme that came up time and again - the power dynamic between the most critical stakeholders in the work was unbalanced.

The unintended bias, oftentimes rooted in socioeconomic disparities, manifested in several ways that proved to be barriers to successful outcomes.

As a response, this guide was created to take a hard look at how to use data and evidence to mitigate these biases, and develop a stronger framework for practitioners to drive the evidence bus - something Project Evident believes is imperative to the success of social sector work.

This guide gives real world examples of how to recognize when unintended bias comes up, and includes advice on how to communicate when it happens, along with steps to take to effectively include all involved in a more equal way.

By using this guide to help identify and mitigate unintended bias, and becoming more familiar with how these biases can manifest when collecting data to build evidence, organizations can move toward a more equal playing field, and build out more impactful programs.

To view the guide, and learn more about how unintended biases can affect evidence collection, please click here.