Data Analytics for nonprofits is becoming a buzzword you hear frequently, but what does it mean to you and your organization? Data may seem intimidating if you haven’t been introduced to it, and it’s tempting to just tune it out. However, data is something we all deal with and isn’t really all that scary, especially when you’ve chosen the proper platforms, like grant management software that can help you make sense of it. Data can help you improve your efforts by giving you stronger numbers as a metric to measure your success. This is increasingly becoming imperative for both nonprofits and philanthropic organizations. For this reason, a new conference, called Data for Good, has just been introduced to help organizations in the nonprofit sphere determine how to use this information effectively, Idealware reported. Nonprofits can use statistics to enhance their mission of improving their community, while foundations and institutions can use this information to make sure they are funding the appropriate organizations for their own missions.
Data issues in the nonprofit world
According to Nonprofit Technology Network, managing data effectively is a problem many foundations and nonprofits face. Some organizations still use very manual-based grant-making or grant application processes that make it extremely difficult to accurately track performance, while other groups may not be keeping track of data at all. Another issue facing nonprofits and foundations is the issue of dealing with data that is kept inconsistently or formatted in a way that makes it impossible to decipher or analyze properly. Your operations may be fine, but if you can’t find a way to accurately measure and analyze the data from your nonprofit or foundation, you definitely have room for improvement. The good news is that there are products available on the market today that help you streamline your data and improve the work your organization does by allowing you to quickly analyze and utilize the data you gather and improve the processes in your day-to-day working life.
How to improve data management
Always begin at the beginning, by doing a deep dive into the effectiveness of your data collection procedures. Without upgrading to a grant management or donation management platform, it may be hard to collect data efficiently. Choosing better technology is the first step to collecting, storing and harnessing statistics you can actually use. A cloud-based platform can store information from donors, data related to the way you use your grant money and other key performance indicators you decide to track in order to allow you to run your business more smoothly and really concentrate on helping more people. Best of all, a good platform will automatically produce visualizations that make it easy to read this data and determine how to make the information work for you.
Not a numbers person? Is this all sounding a bit techy? Well, the great thing is that, with the right grant management platform, you don’t have to be techy at all to perform like a pro. Good grant management platforms take most of the work out of data collection and just give you usable information for process improvement.
