Non-profit organizations have never had access to, accumulated, or utilized such quantities of information on their supporters, beneficiaries, and advocates. In order to benefit from all the gathered data, businesses must go beyond basic reporting and delve into the quickly expanding field of “analytics.” But what exactly does all of this imply for your organization? Is it worthwhile to you and your organization?
In today’s environment, it is assumed that organizations be data-driven. Everything is based on data, whether an industry, company type, or cause. For charities, digital transformation—a redirection of information to better serve stakeholders, donors, and members and increase value – has become increasingly crucial to their survival.
According to a poll, non-profit contributors want to know how their money is being utilized to understand their donations’ impact. The majority of effective charities have been able to use data and the proper sort of technology to their advantage.
The success plan is about pre-emptively preparing for and investing in modern technology platforms, using essential data to make well-informed decisions, optimizing operations, and encouraging transparency.
For most companies, business intelligence solutions have taken data driven decision making to a new level. Every day, a slew of non-profits generate a plethora of data, which must be processed to track the mission objectives.
In addition, dynamic reports and dashboards are an essential component of the operations of these organizations’ members and staff. Data may be overwhelming if it is not adequately analyzed and delivered. This is where Power BI comes in handy.
Four Crucial Ways Data Analytics can help NPOs
The necessity of budgeting and forecasting
Analytics tools can help non-profits reduce the burden of budgeting, planning, and forecasting by eliminating the need to manage dozens of unsynchronized spreadsheets. Integrated and dynamic reports simplify cooperation by concentrating data and minimizing redundancy.
Fundraising and specific outreach are effective.
To raise public awareness, non-profit organizations often organize fundraising events. These events can include everything from casual neighborhood dinners to high-profile galas and parades in major cities. During the year, there are several gatherings that NPOs hold to increase their reach and get more contributors and funds. They must keep track of this information. The past study of this data may assist them in leveraging the power of Predictive Analytics to find out which of their events/activity/location/email responded best and what went wrong.
Compliance with regulations
Non-profits are restricted by data-gathering rules, how it’s used, and what must be reported. Business intelligence may assist organizations in gathering, organizing, analyzing data, producing reports, and following regulations.
Global Insights and Unified Views
Changes in NPOs’ scattered data must be transferred into several systems and files. They require integrated systems to evaluate the influence of one action over the operations/finances or available resources. This may be accomplished by connecting independent silos and projecting everything on a single dashboard.
Data-driven Behavior
Many organizations struggle to measure impact, analyze, and utilize data effectively. While many factors are involved in making an informed decision, the use of data is critical. It’s all about data preparation – gathering and evaluating quantifiable and relevant information during this process.
In contrast to intuition, gut feelings, or past experiences, business data analysis leads to the most effective non-profit decision-makers actions and choices. Power BI becomes a tool for assisting with this type of real-time analytical decision-making in such a real-time analytical decision-making process.
Data Collection
The first step in a technology revolution for many organizations is to gather and centralize data that may be dispersed across several systems.
Some non-profits struggle with a costly, complicated system that is built on several vendors and services, and others have difficulties with varying budgeting or payment systems or dispersed donor lists.
Some organizations specialize in dealing with incongruent external data issues such as census data, testing scores, or even weather statistics.
Once a data-driven business has a tactical approach for bringing together and ensuring its data quality with Power BI, it may start to surface and analyze the information, gaining and sharing insight through reports and compelling dashboards.
It may comprehensively and quantitatively display a broad range of information, from operations transparency to programming impact.
The benefits of data-driven technology
In the non-profit sector, every dollar saved is a dollar earned, and every penny saved increases the impact produced. Therefore, decision-makers, contributors, and volunteers all believe that planned IT investment might be critical to a charity’s effectiveness in the long run.
- Power BI conversion with a well-structured IT governance, leadership that approves excellent IT governance, planned support to meet a charity’s needs in conjunction with its objectives, and staff and volunteers willing to embrace the new solution are all critical factors in overall success.
- Power BI and its data visualization feature may provide a successful modern data platform that can foster transparency, efficiency, and cost savings in the long run.
- The increased openness of a data-driven non-profit may increase consumer satisfaction, provide clarity, and promote trust throughout its network, from board members to business and significant contributors to volunteers.
- Stakeholders can quickly and efficiently verify governance rules. Budgets may be tracked precisely and swiftly by employees. Donors and volunteers can see the amount of money they’ve given. Power BI’s capacity to show and communicate the impact of a non-profit’s efforts may boost momentum tenfold.
- A Power BI solution can provide a tremendous opportunity to improve efficiency. It may highlight emerging areas for growth that otherwise might go unnoticed. Finding and eliminating delays in operations to increase impact or tailor the target audience to save money may be expected with Power BI.
Using Power BI to make the switch
- Power BI makes it easy to share stories about how your data has made a difference. Power BI is the tool to use if you want to display data that changes over time in a simple way accessible to everyone.
- Dragging a slider bar in Power BI allows you to see the changes and create a calculated measurement for a statistic like revenue.
- Instead of creating charts and reports, use the natural language capabilities of Power BI to query and receive visualizations in response. You may set how the data is shown, such as “How many donors attended the last awareness campaign?”
- It’s tough to manage a single form of the truth and ensure alignment between the non-profit and technology when data silos exist throughout the organization.
- Analytics that are inadequately constructed and use inefficient computations will result in poor performance and skepticism of data quality.
- A well-designed Power BI implementation can help a charitable organization devote less time to data wrangling and more time to analyzing information and generating insights.
Power BI will help you make data driven decisions. With all of its possibilities, Power BI may turn out to be a lot handier and improve your decision-making capabilities. It also allows for greater productivity and a laser-like focus on your goal.
With Power BI, you can create various sophisticated visualizations that bring your data to life and make the evaluation process more accessible.
At CF, we will help you get the most out of your Power BI investment, speeding up time to value with our tried-and-true approach and a trained specialist team. So connect with us right away.
Whether you’re a startup organization or a leading corporation, CommunityForce provides fully customizable, all-in-one online grant management solutions to maximize your efficiency, simplify complex processes, and improve collaboration so you can focus on increasing your impact. We’ve helped organizations streamline their entire process no matter the size and scope of their giving.
