Not a distant vendor. A local partner.
We’re a small data consultancy built for mission-driven organizations — nonprofits, local government, and the social impact sector — embedded in the same community as the people we serve. We do this work 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.
We already speak your ecosystem.
A national firm can build you a dashboard. What they can’t do is walk in already understanding the funders you answer to, the collective-impact work happening across town, or the reporting expectations specific to this region. We do — because we work here too.
That fluency shows up in the day-to-day: we know how the region’s anchor institutions shape the local landscape, we’ve worked inside multi-agency initiatives and the public systems that surround them, and we’re already comfortable with client tracking systems, Minnesota state-level data, and the integration work most projects eventually need. None of that is a learning curve we charge you for — it’s just where we start.
For our clients, that means less time spent explaining context and more time spent solving the actual problem.
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.