data and the church the power of second party data
TRANSCRIPT
CHURCHFUEL.COM
The Power of Second Party DataBy Eric Swanson and Matt Engel
DATA AND THE CHURCH
labs
Second party data is really just
someone else’s first party data
As we wrote about in Tip Sheet #6, the best and most powerful data available is the data you as a church collect on the people you serve. This type of data is called “first party data.” First party data is just one type of data that helps you know more about people you are trying to help along their spiritual journey.
SECOND PARTY DATASecond party data is simply someone else’s first party data that they are willing to share with you about the people you serve to help you “know and match” your people to their next steps of growth and engagement. A plus of second party data is that it is not mixed with other data (purity), you know the source of the data (transparency) and how reliable it is (trust) from the beginning. Second party data seems to be broken down into five groups:
1. Information that can be appended to specific people in your church. These entities include:
These are high leveraged tools to help you match leadership and volunteer opportunities to specific people in your church. The prolific church-planting organization Stadia for instance discovered that all of its 500 successful church planters had a “D-I” or “I-D” profile on their DISC test.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Clifton’s Strength Assessment (formerly StrengthFinders)
• Culture Index
• Prepare/Enrich Assessment
• Gloo Assessments
• DISC Personality Test (Our friends at Rock RMS offer a free version of DISC with the results posted on individual’s dashboard)
CHURCHFUEL.COM
The Power of Second-Party Data
2. Information that can be appended to your church as a whole but not tied to any individual congregant.
This type of information helps you to assess the health or progress of your church as a whole by aggregating the scores of everyone in your congregation .
• Reveal for Church Survey
• Gallup’s Member Engagement Survey
3. Church-based research--information that tells you about the church / Christianity as a whole.
This type of information is helpful for identifying the big trends that are happening in the church in different regions of the U.S.—things like information about church attendance, giving trends, and generational cohort trends.
• The Barna Group
• Pew Forum
• Gallup research
• Lifeway research
4. Public data sets
Where the church-based research tells you about the state of the church, public data sets tell you about the state of the city or community in which you live.
• DataUSA.io
• America Counts
• City Health Dashboard
• Census.gov
• Data.gov
• City-data.com
• Racial dot map (one dot based on race of every person in the US)
• Google Trends (the topics people are searching for in your city)
labs
CHURCHFUEL.COM
The Power of Second-Party Data
5. Social Media
This one is a bit creepy but if you want to know more about the man who “comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes” (James 2:2) you can find a lot about a person simply by looking at their social media profile—Super helpful second party data that tells a lot about a person’s interests, experiences, education, skills and job history.
Getting your hands on the right data to create effective and precise audience segments is tough but understanding the power of second party data is a step in the right direction.
QUESTIONS:1. What second party data seems to be the lowest hanging fruit for you?
2. How might having a DISC profile of all your small group leaders help you develop even stronger leaders?
3. How might second party data better help you “know well the condition of your flock?” (Proverbs 27:23)
ACTION STEPS:1. Explore the Racial Dot Map in your city. What were your biggest “ahas?”
2. Explore datausa.io and compare your city to the U.S. over all. Where are you “doing better?” Where are you “doing worse?” What new ministry opportunities come to mind? How might you use second party data to determine who might lead those new opportunities?
3. Explore City Health Dashboard. Where might you want to move the needle in your city?