Organizations and institutions are increasingly dependent on their ability to leverage data assets to further their goals. So much so that googling the tad trite phrase “virtous data cyle” returns a slew of infographics that extoll it in the context of the for-profit enterprise. The benefits of a healthy data management program, somewhat unsurprisingly apply at least equally to the nonprofit sector along with the value proposition of data platforms from the for-profit world such as CRM or customer relationship management systems ( constituent relationship management in nonprofit parlance). While buzzwords like “data mining”, “data lakes”, and “analytics” abound in the wild, few have attempted to holistically describe the data exercise in a nonprofit organization by mapping it to mission and goals while firmly underpinning it to platforms such as Salesforce, and processing techniques essential to secure and efficient data handling. A number of these techniques are likely already being practiced but perhaps without a solid understanding of the value chain in play or a well defined rule book and guidelines, leading organizations to lose out on some of all of the benefits and leverage of good data and its application.
Benefits ? What benefits ?
Here are some that are widely regarded as immediate value on implementing an IT driven data program.
- Accelerated development and higher donor engagement with vastly improved outreach – connect with more people over a multitude of channels.
- Improved client service and program performance – know your client and serve them exactly what they need when they need it.
- Transparency from funding through results.
- Collaboration within and without the organization – use the platform to share data with with teammates, partners and the board.
- Increased efficiency; focus on high value tasks – automate the 80 %.
- Reduced risk – use the platform to backup and secure your data.
- Remote work – most importantly in this current time of upheaval, the ability to work efficiently in a remote distributed fashion where your team can work as a cohesive whole while socially distancing as appropriate.
In the words of Tim Berners-Lee – “Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.” As a nonprofit you already have some notion of data entities such as the highly abbreviated list below and have a vision for how they relate to your mission and goals. For instance you might already recognize –
- Donors ( individuals and organizations )
- Donations
- Volunteers
- Fundraisers
- Programs
- KPIs ( key performance indicators )
These entities are typically already accepted as part of your lingua franca and your staff have expertise in informally defining these data elements and their attributes ( Eg: first and last names and phone numbers for Donors and Volunteers and frequency and amount of Donations ). In addition you might already have a mechanism to capture and organize data to align with these entity definitions. You may have for instance a website contact form that allows individuals, households or organizations to register interest with your cause and pledge support to your initiatives. You may even have a presence on social media, a motivated community and an outreach campaign to engage and solidify commitment and capture donor information from these channels in your system of record ( we’ll talk about this in a bit ). Chances are you are running seasonal, annual or extraordinary fundraising events and campaigns to secure all-important funding for your various programs. There are planning, logistic and execution details of these campaigns as well as an assessment of interest, participation, feedback and results. If any of these data elements sound familiar do read on 😉
As a nonprofit with a well defined goal, you probably manage and track a number of programs in service of your clients. For a nonprofit like FuseChange involved in eliminating homelessness these may involve running shelters through renting, leasing or outright ownership of real estate. These are likely financed with assistance from a state or federal grant or subsidy or a grant from a foundation. Each such physical asset will need to be surveyed, inspected, maintained and reported on for the safe upkeep of your clients as well as to fulfill obligations to the granter and other legal and government entities involved. Thus, you might have contracts for the upkeep and servicing of these facilities and commercial relationships with firms that specialize in real estate management and maintenance. All this information needs to be curated and managed in a reliable, consistent and secure manner in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
And finally, your most important asset, your invaluable staff. That army of indefatigable, dedicated and motivated individuals who live, breathe and embody your cause and in many ways are the public face of your organization. These individuals themselves have important data attributes for both their personal growth and to measure their effectiveness in promoting your organization’s values and goals.
It really is data everywhere !! Just waiting to be tapped and put to use.
Let’s go back to the “system of record” from earlier. And there are many – from old school sticky notes on a board through spreadsheets to state of the art constituent relationship management ( CRM ) systems such as Salesforce for NonProfits colloquially known as NPSP. Modern economies of scale delivered by Cloud Computing have put much power in the hands of small and medium-size nonprofits through offerings such as NPSP. FuseChange – a 501(c)(3) organization – is a firm adherent of the power of the Cloud and its potential to deliver social good at a manageable price point, so much so that we use Salesforce internally to manage and engage our constituents. The commentary that follows assumes the use of a sophisticated CRM such as Salesforce.
The CRM is more than just a passive system of record for data capture. It can also serve as a tool to cleanse your data of duplicates and erroneous information, correlate constituent information across various channels – web, social and direct – and enrich your data from third party sources ( think adding email and phone numbers obtained after the fact to donor information ). It typically is a fully integrated data platform that bridges between your constituent and program management, development and operations activities with an easy to use human interface. This gives you line of sight visibility from funding to results and immediate answers to questions posed by your board and donors on how their donations are being put to use in specific programs and more importantly gauging the success of those programs.
Modern CRMs use the power of AI to glean relationships between your data and surface them in an easy to use fashion. Salesforce Einstein takes it a step further by surfacing constituent sentiment ( motivated, neutral, disengaged ) from interaction activity logs and suggesting the best course of action. From a development standpoint, it puts such highlights at the fingertips of your development staff improving chances of resonating with the constituent and upping engagement scores.
Clearly the service that you deliver to your clients is primary. By automating away much of the busy work you renew your focus on your core mission and objectives – that of serving your clients. Your volunteers and field agents communicate program updates over mobile and smart assistant channels, information that gets automatically digitized and integrated with your program master data without time consuming and error-prone data entry. This low touch, near real time update process allows you to assess program status and automatically course correct in a meaningful timeframe.
Nonprofit boards love dashboards and analytics. Providing them with tactile visualizations of program and mission status is a surefire way of wowing them and ensuring future support. Your CRM choice should provide drag and drop support for building dashboards from familiar entities in your data repertoire that will resonate with board and management alike affording a shared perspective based on real data, and opportunity to collaborate. On a day to day basis, the CRM should also allow real time collaboration on individual data records such as constituent interactions and donations.
Clearly CRM systems like Salesforce unlock tremendous value but it is not all motherhood and apple pie. It can be quite daunting to map and migrate existing ad-hoc processes and practices to a new data driven approach all the while meeting your commitments to clients and stakeholders, and consistently demonstrating value to your board. There needs to be diligent application of process guided by expertise on the platform and a sensitivity to organizational mission and values. We, at FuseChange, can assist organizations like yours with your data management and CRM endeavours by mining our collective experience as nonprofit technology pioneers. All proceeds will go towards funding our mission to build an open source collaboration platform to innovate and share solutions for pressing social issues such as homelessness. Please reach out to us on our website or on any of our social channels below to hear more about how we can help you or sign up for our periodic newsletter.
