This document discusses transparency and dashboards in non-profits. It provides context on why transparency is important through discussions of trust, reputation, and organizational culture. It also examines the Indianapolis Museum of Art's open data dashboard as a case study. Key reasons given for transparency through dashboards are building trust with the public, influencing positive reputation in the new information economy, and facilitating continuous improvement through benchmarking organizational performance.

1. Robert Stein Chief Information Officer Indianapolis Museum of Art rstein@imamuseum.org http://www.imamuseum.org @rjstein A Clear View on Transparency The How’s and Why’s of Dashboards for Non-Profits

2. TRUST

3. The Public’s Trust is a Delicate Commodity Flickr Credit: ~carowallis1

4. DISSAPPOINTMENT

5. GOVERNMENT Flickr Credit: ~wattsbw2004

6. MARKETS Flickr Credit ~rednuht

7. ENVIRONMENT Flickr Credit: ~skytruth

8. BUSINESS Flickr Credit: ~ooitschristina

9. Transparency

10. What is Transparency? Trans-par-en-cy: “The full accurate and timelydisclosure of information” -Wall Street Wordshttp://www.dictionary.com Flickr Credit: ~marcomagrini

13. What don’t we share?Valuation of Artworks Detailed pricing on competitive revenues HR / Privacy information

14. Flickr Credit: ~alphageek We seek to paint the perfect picture, but each know our limitations and vulnerabilities…

15. Trust is broken when our behaviors don’t mirror our public face.

16. INTEGRITY Flickr Credit: ~b-tal

17. Flickr Credit: ~ejchang AUTHENTICITY

18. Transparency: The ongoing discipline of practicing radical authenticity and demonstrating to the public whatever degree of integrity and operational excellence we possess at the time. Flickr Credit: ~fredarmitage

19. “It would be easy to say it's too much, that it's too arcane, too detailed, too boring for donors to care about. But remember, one person's boring factoid is another's hobby. Or hobbyhorse. By putting it all out there, the Indianapolis Museum is telling its public that anyone who cares is an insider. Is it possible someone will go ballistic about their electricity use, or their ownership of possibly plundered art? Sure. But it's not likely. And their openness defuses these things -- much more effectively than trying to keep secrets. If the information is too much, nobody will look at it. Even so, the very fact that they're sharing it makes people respect the museum more. And who knows what info-sated donors might choose to do for an organization they feel trusts and respects them?” Jeff Brooks, “Museum opens the books to anyone who cares”, Donor Power Blog, December 3, 2007 How Much is Too Much?

20. METRICS RULE OF THUMB Will this metric change behavior?

21. Reasons For Transparency The Reputation Economy The Impact on Mission and Performance Organizational Culture

22. The Reputation Economy Reasons for Transparency

23. REPUTATION “But here's the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation.” “Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it - or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine those criticisms high on your Google list of life.” Clive Thompson, “The See-Through CEO”WIRED Magazine - Issue 15.04, March, 2007

24. REPUTATION “There is no outside world anymore, just a world--one that is blogged, Facebooked, Twittered, and utterly porous. The extent to which we can control our image is directly proportionate to our honesty about ups and downs in a context that we can to some degree define” “To view a dashboard primarily as a PR tool is to miss entirely the point of Transparency, which is to influence contemporary organizations to act with greater responsibility.“ Maxwell Anderson The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEOIndianapolis Museum of Art

25. “To view a dashboard primarily as a PR tool is to miss entirely the point of transparency, which is to influence contemporary organ-izations to act with greater responsibility.” -Maxwell Anderson

26. Facebook Case Study

27. privacy Flickr Credit: ~alancleaver

28. Privacy “So which is it? Does Facebook listen to the rumbling and grumbling of everyday Farmville players as its primary strategic compass, or does it do what it as a company thinks is the right thing to do, regardless of users' feelings? Does it measure what the right thing to do is out of commercial concerns or a desire to change the world? Is it in fact trying to change the world, or is it merely reflecting the way the world is already changing? We've heard all these conflicting arguements for months and it's unclear what exactly is going on.” The Half Truths of Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall Kirkpatrick 5/26/2010 ReadWriteWeb.com

29. Privacy Sharpen The Pitchforks. It’s Almost Time For Facebook’s Privacy Wake-Up Call, TechCrunch.com Judiciary Committee Still Has Questions for FacebookReadWriteWeb.com Photo Courtesy of Facebook

31. Closer to Home Cleveland Museum of Art Construction versus Art Purchase See Bricks-and-Mortar Morass: Cleveland Desecrates Donor Intent And Cleveland Museum Hasn’t Tapped Acquisition Funds for Bricks and Mortar (yet) Flickr Credit: ~stuart_spivack

32. The Impact on Mission and Performance Reasons for Transparency

33. “ “I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that, at a time when new media technologies are changing the rules of journalism, companies are placing a new emphasis on Transparency. Access to, and distribution of, information is being rapidly democratized and smart companies know to get out ahead of this trend. However, as with many corporate buzzwords (e.g., "quality" and "innovation"), the concept is suffering from inflation as too many companies claim "Transparency" as part of their identity without really walking the talk.” Mark Hannah, “Transparency as a Principle not a Tactic”PBS.org, January 7, 2009

34. NFP’s spend $’s every year defining strategic plans, but very little on defining metrics which can be used to measure success or failure.

35. Measuring the Strategic Plan Flickr Credit: ~darrenhester

36. What Does Success Look Like? “Of course, such systems [dashboards] raise a rather vexing challenge: what, exactly, are the few key indicators you would need to watch to monitor your success? It's this question that actually proves to be more effective than the dashboard tool itself. To know what you should monitor, you need to know what you're trying to do, and you also have to define what success looks like (more people? happier people? more art? better reviews? prolific artists?).” Andrew Taylor, “Keeping an Eye on Dashboards”, The Artful Manager Blog, October 20, 2006,.

37. What Does Success Look Like?

38. What Does Success Look Like? “The root of the problem is that there is no longer an agreed-upon method of measuring achievement… While many challenges beset art museum leaders today, finding a way to measure performance is accordingly among the field’s most urgent… Without generally accepted metrics, arts organizations will have more and more trouble making a case for themselves.” Maxwell L. Anderson, “Metrics of Success in Art Museums”, Getty Leadership Institute (2004),.

39. So How do we pursue Excellence?

40. Operational Discontinuities are Rare Flickr Credit: ~wheatfields

42. Popularlized by W. Edwards Deming

44. Organizational Culture Reasons for Transparency

45. Once you know what’s important to measure… How do you impart that knowledge to an entire staff? Flickr Credit: ~splorp

46. How do you make a strategic plan more than just the paper its printed on?

47. Organizational Impact Kaizen Two ideographs “change” and “wisdom / goodness / virtue” Popularized in Japan after WWII Used famously at Toyota to identify many small changes that together represented a huge improvement in quality.

48. Organizational Impact “The organizations that will be truly successful in this environment are those that have integrated Transparency as part of their organizational culture and not just their communications strategy. To the extent that the two are inter-related, the communications strategist has a substantial role to play here.” Transparency as a Principle not a Tactic Mark Hannah PBS.org, January 7, 2009

49. Transparency in Practice IMA’s Dashboard

51. Deep Dives

52. Workflow

54. OPEN SOURCE http://code.google.com/p/museum-dashboard/

55. DASHBOARD BASICS Since Oct 2007 78 Statistics 135 Users 25,720Visits 6 Topics 13 Departments

56. Dashboard Series: Average Daily Energy Consumption

57. TAKE THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

60. Automated data is easy to forget about.

62. Topics: Dynamically Defined Collections of Statistics

63. Simplified Editing and Updates

64. Monitoring of Update Frequency and Expiration

65. Guidelines for Dashboards Choose a few key metrics Identify and Share areas for Improvement Simplify the Presentation Involve Staff Explain Your Reasoning Describe how you measure Participate in Creating Open Standards

66. Thank You! Questions?