At DataKind UK, we have been developing our strategy and ways of working to help us focus on our mission of bringing responsible data use to the third sector. As a charity and community, we want our mission, strategy, and values to be fully aligned and working for everyone involved with us.

Our values underpin all areas of our work and inform all our decisions. As the organisation moves into its ‘teenage’ years, we reflect on our learnings from the past decade to ensure that our values align with our mission, and are representative of how we work.

Why update your values?

Over the last ten years, DataKind UK has seen massive changes happening within the third sector; in the field of data science; and in the wider digital and tech industry. We want to reflect the advancement we have seen and the experience we have gained, while upholding the original principles we were founded with.

How did you approach it?

As the role and mission of our organisation is fundamentally unchanged, we built a ‘long list’ of ideas and suggestions based on the initial set of values that we were founded with, such as sustainability and transparency.

We then surveyed our board, committees, and volunteer community, some of whom have been with us for several years, to find out which values they felt reflected how the organisation currently operates, and areas where it might improve or increase its focus. This helped us refine the long list down to the most popular among the community, including options such as ‘friendly’ and ‘skillful’.

Finally, we held a workshop with the staff team and a few key community members to narrow it down to a top three. The criteria were that, as well as being values that all of the team felt were representative of the organisation’s mission and direction, they would be demonstrable in the way we work.

Our values

So, here are the final three!

Curious

We take a questioning approach, applying our curiosity to our own work, and to the work and challenges of our partners to help drive innovation and mission-attainment across the third sector.

Responsible

We are committed to transparent, ethical and responsible practices, and to sharing these principles to ensure that data can be harnessed ‘for good’ in the third sector.

Collaborative

We champion data use in the third sector and bring together organisations and volunteers to collectively get the most out of the data available, and increase the third sector’s impact.

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to this process, and is part of our fantastic community! We hope that as an organisation, we will successfully uphold and represent these values for many years to come.

Updating our organisation’s values — why now?