How Data Can Boost Your Non-Profit
You’re already excellent, but it can’t hurt to put a number on it
If you’re running any kind of organization that interacts with the public, chances are you’re sitting on a pile of data. In many cases, this data is not formally contained on some central server, but it is there. Every time your members interact with clients, they generate some sort of information. Maybe they collect contact information, or start an email chain, or add to the files on a specific client. No matter how informally you may be collecting it, you have data.
On top of that, there is likely a lot of publicly available data that pertains to your field. Working on homelessness? There’s a dataset for that. Working on education? There’s a dataset for that. And not just one — most of these issues have many datasets from multiple sources that you can compare and consider.
Here, I won’t spend too much time on how to get pertinent data for your cause; that is a topic for another post. Instead, I want to start by motivating you to even get into the data game.
How can data help your non-profit? Here are three main ways:
1. IDENTIFY NEEDS
Imagine you want to improve education for underserved populations. Well, what populations are underserved? How is that disadvantage affecting them? What are the long-term consequences of having to attend less well-funded schools?
You may have a feel for the answers to these, but if you’re trying to pitch the concept to investors, having actual tangible data will be a lot more persuasive than common sense and your gut feelings. With the right data, you could demonstrate definitively that some populations are getting lower test scores, and you could identify contributing factors. You could even use machine learning to quantify the potential impact of your proposed interventions. All of this will give your potential funders a sense that you (and by extension, they) are addressing a concrete issue in a way that will get real results. Which means they’ll be much more likely to fund your project.
Identifying needs also gives you the potential to narrow the focus of your work. Maybe you want to improve education, but looking at the data shows you that educational weaknesses are most prevalent in elementary schools and among people whose parents didn’t go to college (for example). Well, now you can carve out a niche and tell a more vivid story with your work. You can paint the picture of a student whose parents are struggling to help them because of their own educational gaps. You can target potential investors who are themselves first-generation college students. You can propose interventions that specifically help your population, like providing educational aids to the parents of these students. All of these would give your organization a more clear identity and a more concrete mission.
To sum it all up, data can help your non-profit to identify real needs in the community and think creatively about how to address them. This, in turn, helps you get real results and drive further funding.
2. REFINE PROCESSES
Ok, so now you’ve got yourself started and you’re doing some good work in the community. Nice! The question you can start asking yourself here is — how are we doing this work?
Humanity’s capacity to organize is what allowed our species to rise above the apes and become the dominant species on the planet. But it’s still profoundly imperfect, and every organization is probably wasting resources on any number of erroneous tasks. By exploring the data, you can streamline and refine the way your non-profit functions so that you spend less time on minutiae and more time on your mission — helping the community.
This could be as simple as moving your data from a paper filing system to a digital one; that’ll take some data warehousing know-how, but it’ll greatly improve your workflows. Or maybe you see that whenever a certain issue comes up, the email chains tend to be 3 times as long as the average. Well, maybe we need to put an official process in place to handle those cases so that people don’t spend forever negotiating the issue themselves.
You can also see what’s not working. Maybe one of your case workers usually has a great record but they’ve been working with a certain family for a long time without getting results. In such a case, you could investigate why this particular case is proving difficult; maybe another case worker has a different style that would be better suited to it. Or maybe you find that on days when you don’t put out coffee, the number of people coming to the shelter is typically 10% lower than normal. That’s something you may not be able to detect just by being there, but it’s an easy data point to measure, then change, and thus increase your organization’s impact.
3. DEMONSTRATE VALUE
Great, so now you’ve identified a need and you’ve got some great techniques to help meet it. And you’ve been plugging along for a while, but now it’s time to expand or to pump up your fundraising. Don’t worry, the data has your back on this one too.
Imagine two grant proposals from education-oriented non-profits. In one of them, the author writes that their organization ‘did great work’ and ‘made big contributions’ to improve test scores for first-generation college students. In the other, the organization says the same things, but also provides a number of different graphs and tables to demonstrate that thanks to their work, test scores for first-generation college students improved by 25% overall. Who would you rather fund? It’s a no-brainer.
This kind of before-and-after comparison can prove to potential funders that you know what you are doing and can get results. But it also shows that you are making an effort to measure your impact and improve. This demonstrates a greater potential for future growth as well as showing that you are able to get results now.
And of course, it’s not always about investors. You can also use data to pat your team on the back and show them that their work really makes a difference. That, after all, is why you’re in the non-profit business, and being able to demonstrate that to your team and to yourself can provide a great morale boost and energize your entire organization.
CONCLUSION
Data can help your non-profit identify real needs, refine its processes, and give concrete proof of its community contribution.
To sum it up, I’ll leave you with a little analogy. The difference between an organization that uses its data intelligently and one that runs mostly by gut instincts is like the difference between a physical conversation in person and a conversation via text. In person, you can see how your words impact your conversation partner based on a whole spectrum of inputs, from their face to their body language to their tone. You can intuitively adjust your own tone and body language to suit the situation, and if you need to help them, you can do anything from giving them a hug to handing them a tissue. On the other hand, if you’re just texting, then you get just the flat written text, with no other cues. It can be hard to tell what people are really thinking or feeling, and even harder to provide meaningful help except with the most basic ‘sorry to hear that’ kind of messages.
I’d much rather be the organization actually talking to my clients than the one texting them from miles away.
