Why do a blog about Community Analytics?

Blogging about Community Analytics (CA) is needed as part of a complete program to help familiarize people about the initiative.

The need for something like CA is obvious when CA type value analysis is applied to the existing metrics. But most people are quite happy to go along with the status quo, including the metrics that give the status quo such stability. The situation is the classic Catch22.

The CA methodology has been developed based on the ideas that (1) what gets measured gets done; and, (2) the way the game is scored determines how the game is played. For most of the industrial revolution wealth was about the accumulation of money and property that had money value. Anything else was left out of the equation. Nearly 200 years of this system of money metrics, with social value metrics sidelined for all of this time means that the game has become very focused on money to the detriment of value.

It is increasingly clear that the money metric needs to be supplemented by a value metric ... and while value is subjective, and quantification is not very easy, it is clear that value metrics are going to be important.

It is also apparent that the focus of metrics should be much more about the community than about any individual organization, whether business or philanthropic. With this approach it becomes possible to do analysis that is not possible at the aggregate national level, nor with analysis that starts from the perspective of the organization, the sector or the project.

Feedback and comment is welcome.