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.
Portland Means Progress
Prosper Portland is the economic and urban development agency for the city of Portland, Oregon. The organization describes itself as "committed to growing quality jobs, advancing opportunities for prosperity, creating vibrant neighborhoods and communities, and collaborating with partners to create an equitable city, with prosperity shared by Portlanders of all colors, incomes and neighborhoods."
Every year, Portland Means Progress conducts a survey of businesses to help them reflect on their work. Until 2022, Prosper Portland had only used data from this survey to create a high-level impact report. Businesses, however, did not get to see their individual results and, without a way to see their progress across years, were in the dark about their growth. Working together, we helped to developed beautiful reports that show businesses what they have done over the years.
Producing Reports on the Global Impact of Pneumonia and Diarrhea
For the last 15 years, the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at Johns Hopkins University has produced an annual report on the impact of pneumonia and diarrhea around the world. In the past, the major challenge in putting this report together was time. Data would come in close to the deadline to release the report and it was a scramble to get everything ready.
We worked with IVAC to create attractive reports using R that can be updated easily each year. The scramble to produce the reports is over, and IVAC can focus on its larger mission of ensuring global access to life-saving vaccines.
Oregon Farmworker Needs Assessment
In 2022, the Oregon Human Development Corporation (OHDC) set out to conduct research on the needs of farmworkers across the state. The resulting report would help shed light on issues facing this long-neglected population.
R for the Rest of Us partnered with Colibri Consulting and OHDC to put together the 2022 Farmworker Needs Assessment. Jody O’Connor of Colibri worked with OHDC’s team to conduct interviews, focus groups, and surveys with farmworkers and those who support them. We brought together information from these sources with public data on farmworkers. The resulting report, with clear and compelling data visualization, maps, and tables, was created entirely in R.