By Steph McDonald
Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA) is the national representative body for a network of independent disability advocacy organisations across Australia. Their vision is of a nation that values and includes people with disabilities while upholding human rights for all.
To achieve this, DANA:
Promotes the role and value of independent disability advocacy
Provides a collective voice for its members
Facilitates communication and information sharing between advocacy organisations
Supports and develops members, staff, and volunteers
Builds an evidence base to demonstrate the value of advocacy
Advocates for the rights, needs, and diversity of people with disabilities
The Problem: Measuring Unmet Demand in Disability Advocacy
One of the major challenges DANA faces is quantifying the level of unmet demand within the sector.
Unmet demand serves as a critical metric that highlights the gap between the support available and the actual need in communities. By accurately tracking unmet demand, DANA can make a stronger case for increased funding, ensuring advocacy services have the resources to support more people effectively. To address this, DANA sought expertise to refine their data collection and analysis process.
DANA and the GDI Team
Recognising the need for strong foundations in data capture specifically in the scope of unmet demand, DANA partnered with the Good Data Institute (GDI). The collaboration brought together a diverse team of four data professionals. Their goal was to create an insightful dashboard to better showcase unmet demand as well as defining data capture requirements.
One of the key challenges the team faced was understanding the disability advocacy sector and defining what "unmet demand" truly meant for DANA. They had to navigate complex reporting structures, explore how organisations manage waitlists, and determine how clients move through these systems.
A brilliant exercise that DANA organised were 2 information sessions where they had representatives from many of their various organisations to discuss this project. These were brilliant opportunities for the GDI team to more deeply understand how each of these organisations currently capture data relating to their waitlists. This information was very critical in ensuring the solution the GDI team built would align with the needs and tracking abilities of these organisations to ensure quality data at the end.
The Solution: A Power BI Dashboard for Unmet Demand
The team set out to build a Power BI dashboard that would visually represent the extent of unmet demand in disability advocacy services.
Key Technical Details:
Data Source: The dashboard was built using data from DANA’s online reporting form, which member organisations use to track waitlists and client services.
Integration: Power BI was directly connected to Salesforce through a native connector, streamlining data flow.
Data Challenges: Since the data collection process had quality issues, the team worked to refine the form itself, ensuring that future entries would be more structured and reliable.
Dashboard Development: The primary focus was on identifying the best way to measure unmet demand and designing the visualisations to effectively communicate this information.
You can see the dashboard in its current form below ⤵️
The Outcome: Progress and Future Potential
While the dashboard is still in its early stages and requires a few months of data collection before yielding it’s true impact, its potential is clear.
DANA is excited by the ability to consistently track and measure unmet demand in a reliable way. Having this data available will help them advocate for better funding and demonstrate the true scale of the needs within the disability advocacy sector.
This partnership highlights the power of data-driven decision-making in the nonprofit sector. By equipping advocacy organisations with the right tools, we can enhance their ability to support communities in need and push for systemic change.
If you are a charity interested in partnering with GDI, please do not hesitate to get in contact through our website: https://www.gooddatainstitute.com/notforprofits
About GDI:
The Good Data Institute (established 2019) is a registered not-for-profit organisation (ABN: 6664087941) that aims to give not-for-profits access to data analytics (D&A) support & tools. Our mission is to be the bridge between the not-for-profit world and the world of data analytics practitioners wishing to do social good. Using D&A, we identify, share, and help implement the most effective means for growing NFP people, organisations, and their impact.
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