Call Me Data Queen

So much for all my talk about "not being into data".

I'm sitting at my Board meeting last night; we're talking about dues structures and a Board member asks for numbers on our members - I whip out my handy graphs that I had made for last month (and posted about here).

At another point, someone wants to know how our dues levels compare to other affiliated organizations (chapters) nationwide. It just so happens, I've just finished compiling a comparison chart for our "Association of Administrators",the group of all the local administrators who get together at the National's annual meetings. Turns out, despite our small size in the grand scheme of things, we're one of the biggest! Everyone's happy.

Then, someone else wonders how a certain program's budget breaks down - and here I am again, at the ready with my dutiful budget breakdown from last year's budgeting process.

And finally, we're talking about the strategic planning process (again) and someone suggests doing a market analysis - and I actually think to myself that this would be a WONDERFUL idea, which might push them beyond the abstract and into action.

Shocker!

The funny thing is, lest you think I am "teachers' pet" or something, (and how totally uncool would that be, obviously!), but I actually did not have any of this stuff in my Board materials on purpose. I swear. It's just things I happened to be working on that at some point I thought, this could be useful later on, and threw into a "keep somewhere" folder.

Far from being anti-data, like I thought I was, I am turning into the Data Queen. I can hear myself now - "Data's about the past, not the future"... well, that may be true, but it sure can help speed up a Board meeting!