Why NGOs should digitize data?

Where Sun is the only source of light and the North-star shows way are the places where development organizations operate; if this is your concept of development work, it’s high time you change it. The whole scenario of development work has changed in last couple of decades. The roll up of internet is the cherry on top.

Keeping SDG and its measurable goals in mind, for a non-profit or NGO, Data has become crucial more than ever, not only to assess and measure but also to better understand beneficiaries and design the program intervention accordingly. And when you claim to change million lives, it becomes vital to efficiently manage the database as you bear the burden of proof as well.

An efficient and comprehensive database help you make informed decisions and streamline operational processes, while keeping yourself prepared to save valuable time during emergency. Creating data focused evidence will also help construct strong advocacy point, reevaluate relationships with donors, beneficiaries and clients to contribute more money towards your organizational mission.

Now digitizing millions of your data point is basically giving your organization a fair chance to data driven decision making and evidence based advocacy. Let’s see why digitizing data is crucial for effective development:

• Visibility, visibility, visibility

There is not doubt that all the nonprofits are working hard to bring equality, remove injustice and celebrate inclusion.

In this era of information, what better way is there to you make sure that all those people’s voice are heard and their footprints are seen? Visibility and publicity is important for contemporary non-profit organizations not only in attracting volunteers and donations but also in encouraging civic engagement, creating public trust and reaching out potential institutional partners. What is a better way than visualizing through data revolution?

• Accessible from anywhere, anytime with multi users

For an international NGO representing multiple countries, it is very crucial for central authorities to have access to operational data for decision making, effective monitoring and evaluation purpose. Even at the national office, from field level to the Head Office, data input goes through at least 5 layers of vetting (on Field input, Branch, Area, Region, District and Head office). If your data are digitized, it will be accessible from anytime, anywhere to anyone who has permission, with no added cost or time.

• Tracking back documents’ origin

Very often we find document with nobody responsible or has ownership with. If it is not written on the document, it is very difficult to find out who created or edited it. In digital data, who edited when, who did the first and last input, who is responsible for what is traceable.

• Disaster recovery and backup

Think of an unfortunate incident like fire; all paper based data will be gone. In case of digital data, it is almost always possible to recover the data, given the back up resources.

• Increase overall productivity of organization

The access to hard-copy based database will obviously be limited, so will be its content. To ensure multiple access you will need high maintenance cost along with logistics cost. Now if the content is piled up somewhere in a stack of paper in some remotely located branch office, how many hours would it take to search, research, analyze, update or circulate the data? Let alone the time consumption of data cleaning (literally, in case of long preserved data set).

• Carbon footprints?

Worried about plastic bags? To produce paper takes twice the energy used to produce a plastic bag. On the other hand, the production of 1 metric ton of paper requires. 24 trees for white office paper. The biggest cost of data storage is mostly fixed cost. If the data is not stored in the cloud, it needs some server cost to store them, some maintenance and human resource are needed. On the other hand paper based data not only incur the marginal cost, but also storage issue for archiving it.

• Breaking the Silos:

Every big NGOs has a number of operational focus areas that don’t talk to each other. But representing the same organization sometimes force them to get into each other’s business. While direct communication is encouraged, having access to other’s operational database is sometimes blissful. However, not everything is amazing about digitization. I am sure it incurs some irreplaceable costs, but the added value does offset the cost.

When data is handled properly and displayed effectively, it can help change minds — and change the world. Are you still thinking about taking a leap of faith towards data digitization? Well information is like happiness. It gets more effective when shared. Get on board.