Five numbers that show a policy field is growing
Nisha Austin: This week I wish I were reading something about which ~five numbers tell you a policy field is growing rather than just getting louder. I'd like to see some metrics around things like how many paid jobs there are in the field, how many organizations reach year three, how many people leave advocacy for jobs in government, and what share of the field's money comes from someone other than the funders who started it. Some of this is already countable: there is a jobs board with roughly 280 listings on it today (worth noting this is an aggregator of adjacent orgs and not necessarily a single field), and the best public count of pro-housing groups is still more than 140, assembled off social media in January 2022 by two researchers who admitted they had probably missed some. Someone please go count them again!