coffee & quality

Coffee & Quality helps nonprofits learn best practices and explore new innovations in data and evaluation practices. Analyzing data plays an important role in how nonprofits share information with their supporters and help the community understand their impact. However, many organizations lack the capacity to make the most of the data at their fingertips. Coffee & Quality brings data experts and info-seekers together in a collaborative context created to empower and uplift attendees and their organizations.  

Coffee & Quality is open to all nonprofit professionals but may be particularly useful to nonprofit staff tasked with continuous quality improvement (CQI), including data analysts, program managers, quality coordinators, evaluation specialists, and more. To get the most of Coffee & Quality, guests should come ready to actively participate in discussions, share their experiences, and work collaboratively in the learning environment.  

Coffee & Quality is an initiative of United Way of Greater Houston with generous support from the Houston Endowment. Coffee & Quality is led by United Way’s Mission & Strategy team with input and support from presenters and collaborators from throughout the Greater Houston nonprofit community. 

Coffee & Quality is 100% online. We know how difficult it can be to leave the office during the workweek — that’s why we’ve made Coffee & Quality a collaborative Zoom experience. While we encourage guests to attend in real time for networking and collaboration, each session is also added to our YouTube channel for future reference or to catch up on sessions you couldn’t make! 

The Learning Cohort is a community of practice focused on expanding knowledge and application of storytelling with data through data visualization. Each Learning Cohort is a small group (10-15 participants) who meet over 3 months to improve professional competency by engaging in shared inquiry and learning related to data visualization and data stories. For more information on the Learning Cohort, email learning@unitedwayhouston.org.

The Case Study provides an opportunity for a nonprofit to answer research-related questions and strengthen quality improvement with direct support from UWGH and Kinder Institute for Urban Research (KIUR) at Rice University. As highlighted in the inaugural case study highlighted by the Kinder Institute, this is a collaborative research-practice model to help organizations improve data practices, enhance program evaluation, and better demonstrate their impact to stakeholders. This collaborative approach ensures solutions are tailored to each organization’s unique needs while fostering a culture of cross-pollination where lessons learned can be applied across the wider nonprofit landscape.

The Fellows Program is a community of practice focused on developing and strengthening data and evaluation practices within an organization to support sustainability. The Fellows Program equips
organizations with sustainable strategies to extract powerful insights from their existing data streams. Through the Fellows Program, nonprofit organization will:

1. promote sustainable practices in data and evaluation to safeguard business continuity and preserve institutional knowledge during staff attrition
2. the ability to use data and findings from evaluation to inform decisions and improve programmatic impact

For more information on the Fellows Program, email learning@unitedwayhouston.org.

Email us at learning@unitedwayhouston.org to learn more.