Some Thoughts on Reactions to my Call for Qualitative Data in the Jewish Community

Moishe House's response on Twitter

After last week's post, "Qualitative Metrics for the Jewish Community?", I got compliments as well as other people telling me that they've been having similar ideas and was glad that I shared their sentiments.  However, not having seemed to have generated much discussion with it, I realized with such ideas that are widely relevant for Jewish organizations, I needed to have further distribution of it.  As an avid reader of eJewish Philanthropy, I knew that that was the place that would get the piece not only a wider audience, but also an audience that would care about the discussion.  So, up went my piece on that website two days ago.

    I got a lot more responses!  Here, at the Hillel staff conference, Hillel Institute, I got a number of people mentioning it to me, which was great to be in a community of people concerned about it!  A number of people in-person, via e-mail, twitter, etc. thanked me for asking the questions about qualitative data.  I also got some responses that were not so warm to what I wrote, but I think some of those did not fully understand where I was coming from nor did they understand precisely what I was writing.... 
     I also got sent data reports from a few national organizations, such as this one and this one, which was not only interesting, but also great to sift through.  I hope to offer my thoughts on them at a later point, but it was flattering that I was receiving such material.  I hope, however, that discussing these data reports will be a two-way street and that I can be seen to be someone who can be involved in these conversations in a substantive and thoughtful way.

      I certainly feel that my primary goal of getting the public discourse to be considering qualitative data was achieved, especially since there were two pieces included in today's eJewish Philanthropy that were in direct response to my post from the other day.  One is here and the other is here (which starts off with the line "Drew Kaplan is right"!!).  

      However, a funny thing happened after posting the article and receiving feedback, I realized i was developing ideas and sharpening up some angles and elements of considering qualitative data for Jewish organizations.  It is my hope to write up my thinking on this to continue the conversation going and into ideas that will benefit us all.