Communicate More Effectively and Efficiently
High-quality data visualization, workflow improvements, and custom packages to enable your organization to communicate more effectively and more efficiently.
Data Visualization that Communicates
When the Ford Family Foundation came to me about working on their first-ever Oregon by the Numbers report, all they knew was they wanted to come up with a way to share key social and economic indicators for each of the 36 counties in the state.
We knew that what they originally presented to me — a series of tables of data — would not garner the attention the topic deserved. So, working with their staff over several months, we developed a visually-appealing report that would clearly communicate strengths and challenges that Oregon’s counties face.
The full report has been shared widely with policymakers, the media, and others who care about the future of Oregon.
From One Report, Many
Producing one report is a lot of work. Producing tens or even hundreds of reports is completely overwhelming. We help organizations make this daunting task less daunting. Using parameterized reporting, we help organizations that need to generate reports in bulk.
Need a report for each school in your district? A report for every town in your state? With our help, you can do this without losing your mind.
This is exactly what R for the Rest of Us did in building out 170+ reports for the Partnership for Strong Communities.
A Map for Change in the Asian Pacific Islander Community
When Kathleen Doll of Intention2Impact reached out to R for the Rest of Us for support making an interactive map on food resources for the Asian Pacfic Islander community of San Francisco, she figured that her team would have to do a bunch of manual data entry before we created the map. Working together, we not only made a beautiful interactive map, but we automated the process of collecting data.
Consistency = Better Communication
You may think of R as a tool for data analysis, but it can also be used to make attractive reports that communicate effectively. I helped Colorado-based OMNI Institute by developing a custom R package that enables all of their reports to follow their style guide. Their reports have a clean look and feel, with plots and tables that use OMNI colors and fonts. Instead of spending hours formatting each report the organization makes, OMNI can now simply use this package to ensure their reports look great.
It's Not Just for Quantitative Data
We worked with Seattle-based firm ORS Impact and the Democracy Funders Initiative to put together reports on outreach efforts for the 2020 United States Census.
These reports combined quantitative and qualitative data and the clients weren't sure initially if that could work in R. Working together, we combined descriptions of outreach efforts with quantative data on the states where outreach happened.
The process we set up to do this was sophisticated yet simple, and allowed the clients to make over 50 state-level reports with ease.