Introducing: Data… for What?!

Where Are We Going?

Widening DG’s Focus

To understand the new Strategic Plan, we need to discuss the previous Strategic Plan. DG has historically been a technology generalist, but in the last strategy we made a really intentional decision to focus on specific sectors (health, agriculture, and public financial management) and to concentrate specifically in West and East Africa. In addition to our work as implementers, we added a work stream of data strategy and policy. By narrowing our focus in the last plan, we were able to better understand our core value proposition and programmatic offerings. We found that as we worked in fewer regions, more intentionally and deeply, we were able to deliver better change. Now, with our new Strategic Plan, we are uniquely situated to thoughtfully build upon that consolidated base and to scale our impact.

The Current Global Moment

Throughout the conversation, Vanessa, Aleks, and Kristin highlighted the importance of the current moment in global affairs. Between the largest youth population in human history, recent democratic backsliding, societal changes from the COVID-19 pandemic, and more, now is a crucial moment to reassess how we can best use data and digital to solve problems. 

A Growth Agenda

In 2020, I wrote that “A global pandemic may not be the ideal business environment to pursue a growth agenda, but we believe that now is the time for DG to be bolder, and that this boldness will require that we also be bigger.” We are explicit in the new strategic plan that we intend to double the size of DG in the next three years. We see that the world and technology are rapidly changing and if we do not match the scale of these challenges and opportunities, and make aggressive strides, we risk not having the impact DG is capable of. This is where the partnership with IREX is important. By growing our work together, we know that we can leverage our strengths for even deeper change.

DG has spent the last few years positioning ourselves for this growth. We have prioritized systems and processes that will allow us to grow while preserving our culture of innovation and learning, the quality of our work, and while remaining a good partner. In many ways, this is not the beginning of a growth agenda, but rather the midway point. We are now in a position to accelerate this growth in a responsible and impactful way.

This growth agenda also means growing our global team. Over the past five years, DG has gone from 50% based in the United States to less than 25% of our team being based in the US. Our team is now based in more than a dozen countries around the world, and we plan to continue that trend in this growth cycle.

The Process

We had intended to release this Strategic Plan over a year ago, but early in the strategy process our conversations with IREX started, and so we put the Strategic Plan on hold. Last October we finalized the partnership and established a new board, which allowed us to restart the strategy process. From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, we worked closely with the board, but we also wanted it to be a broadly inclusive process as well. In the early stages of development we had one-on-one conversations with DGers to understand what the team was seeing in their programming, what they were excited about, what was working and what was not, and where they saw opportunities. In March, we held an all hands meeting to present a general outline, talk about the process, and allow the team to ask questions. In April, the full DG team had the opportunity to read the strategy and make any additional comments. Throughout the process we had many touchpoints for comments from both the Board and from DGers, which was important for shaping the Strategic Plan.

The Partnership 

IREX is a crucial part of this strategy cycle, and specifically in our growth trajectory. We have had much interest from other nonprofit leaders in how the partnership came together. This came out in my conversation with Kristin as well. Both Kristin and I agree that the most important part is figuring out what you want to do together and why. From there, it is much easier to select a method of partnership. Kristin also emphasized that there is a spectrum to how a partnership of this kind could look – from full merger to a more dedicated plan of working together.