Not a distant vendor. A working partner.
We’re a small data consultancy built for mission-driven organizations — nonprofits, local government, and the social impact sector — small enough that you work directly with the people doing the work. We do this because the missions matter, and good data makes them go further.
Chris brings a decade of experience across the corporate and government sectors — building data pipelines, reporting systems, and the analysis that turns raw numbers into decisions. He founded Data for Humans in 2021 with a single goal: to grow data capacity in the nonprofit and public sectors.
He works as the architect and builder behind the firm’s engagements — designing dashboards, automating the reporting grind, and connecting the systems that mission-driven teams juggle day to day.
His focus is the same on every project: make the data usable for the whole team, not just the person who happens to be comfortable with spreadsheets.
Michael brings two decades of work at the intersection of data, equity, and public impact. As a former senior leader at Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, he has built and run the kind of large-scale public data systems most consultants only read about.
He specializes in collective-impact data, integrated data systems, and equity-informed analytics — the work of getting many agencies to share one trustworthy picture while protecting the people behind the numbers.
Minnesota roots, national reach.
Our roots run through both ends of Minnesota — the Twin Cities, where Michael spent two decades building public data systems at Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, and Rochester, where Chris has built dashboards and reporting infrastructure for county initiatives and regional nonprofits. That’s where we learned this work, and it’s still where a good share of it happens.
But the problems don’t stop at a state line. A coalition trying to see itself in one picture, a program officer asking for evidence you can’t easily produce, a client tracked in three systems that don’t talk — we’ve seen the same knots everywhere we’ve worked. The fluency that matters most isn’t local geography; it’s knowing how funders, public agencies, and multi-agency initiatives actually operate, and knowing what a small team can realistically maintain after we’re gone.
So we work wherever the need is. Engagements run remotely by default, with on-site time when a project genuinely calls for it — and we’ll tell you plainly when it does.
The principles behind every project.
Plain language, always
No jargon, no black boxes. If your team can’t understand and use what we build, we haven’t finished the job.
Your tools, your way
We work with the systems you already run and the way your team already operates — not a rebuild you didn’t ask for.
Scoped to reality
We size the work to your actual budget and capacity. Right-sized beats over-built every time.