Relationships, Resources, and Responsiveness: How Social Sector Organizations Approach Data Equity In a Shifting Landscape

Background and Purpose: Social sector organizations increasingly recognize data as central to demonstrating impact, securing resources, and advancing equity. Yet how data equity is understood and practiced within these organizations, and across the networks they inhabit, remains underexplored. This qualitative study examines how social sector professionals define and practice data equity in their day-to-day work, how organizational culture and leadership shape data governance, and what conditions support or constrain equitable, collaborative data practices.

Methods: Twenty social sector professionals from a Midwestern metropolitan region participated in individual, semi-structured interviews conducted between August and December 2025. Purposive and snowball sampling recruited participants with varied relationships to data in their work and from a range of roles including senior leadership, program staff, and data managers. Participant organizations ranged in size from small (under $250K budget) to large (over $5M) and spanned human services, community improvement, health, arts and culture, research, philanthropy, and education. Seven participants identified as white only, six as Black or African American only, two as Hispanic or Latinx, two as Asian or Asian American, one as Middle Eastern or North African, and four as multiracial. Twelve participants identified as women, five as men, and three as non-binary, genderqueer, or genderfluid. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, deidentified, and analyzed thematically, guided by Attride-Stirling's framework of basic, organizing, and global themes.

Findings: One global-level theme emerged: relationships and resources shape data practices within a contested and rapidly shifting political and funding environment. Four organizing themes were identified, each contextualized by underlying basic themes. First, scarcity and political conditions, including attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and federal funding shifts, disproportionately set the terms under which data governance relationships operate. Second, data sharing and relational trust are mutually reinforcing, with leadership openness, co-design, and communication turning barriers into collaborative opportunities. Third, organizational culture, leadership buy-in, distributed expertise, and communication and translational skills across roles shape whether data equity is embedded in practice or remains an adjacent aspiration. Fourth, equitable community data relationships require centering co-design, preserving dignity, and sustaining community ownership of data.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings advance understanding of how social sector organizations approach data as a relational and organizational practice, not merely a technical one. Notably, no single shared definition of data equity emerged. Instead, participants oriented around shared values. Across themes, crisis moments (e.g., COVID-19, regional disaster response) have demonstrated both gaps and how cross-sector data collaboration is possible at scale, pointing to what sustained infrastructure could look like outside of emergency conditions. At a moment of heightened resource scarcity and political contestation, these findings offer actionable insights for organizational leaders, funders, and capacity-building initiatives. Social work researchers and practitioners are well positioned to support organizations in embedding data equity values and practices into governance structures, building trust with communities, and sustaining collaborative data practices across shifting conditions.