MEASURE: Meme Styles - How to Champion Equity Through Community-Led Research

“There was no real mechanism for measuring what we meant when we said build trust… Who was creating the surveys? What was the methodology? What were the metrics assessing relationships?” - Meme Styles

You use data every day.

In the stories you tell donors.

In the statistics you share on social media.

In the decisions you make about the future of the organization.

But data-informed decision-making goes deeper than just collecting numbers and drawing conclusions from them.

Meme Styles, our guest today, reminds us that we need to be asking some important questions: 

• Where did these numbers come from?
• How do we know they are trustworthy and accurate?
• How biased or unbiased are the sources of that data or the methodology we’re utilizing?

From running a lunchroom advocacy campaign as a third grader to sitting on panels with city officials in Austin, TX, Meme has always been a force for change. And in 2015, she founded MEASURE, a nonprofit data advocacy organization working to eliminate social disparities in health, education, economics, and criminal justice—one dataset at a time.

In this episode, Meme shares how data can either reinforce inequities or drive systemic change, how data bias can show up in nonprofits, why community is the best form of technology, and the most impactful decision Meme says she’s made in her leadership.

If you’re a nonprofit leader committed to equity, dignity, and visionary leadership, this conversation is for you.

Want our key takeaways from this conversation? Take a look at the show notes for this episode: https://www.futurenonprofit.com/meme-styles/