Think about the many ways your nonprofit uses data. For example, you might use information about individual donors to tailor your outreach efforts. You may leverage past financial data to shape your organization’s budget and set fundraising goals. Or, you could use data about your program attendance rates and outcomes to better understand your organization’s impact.
You get the picture—your organization uses data to inform nearly every facet of its operations. This is why collecting high-quality data is crucial—to help you understand your organization’s community and its work accurately.
However, collecting data effectively is often easier said than done. In this short guide, we’ll walk through some tips for overcoming common data collection challenges so that you can be confident in the information you gather and use it to make decisions for your organization. Let’s begin!
Common Data Collection Hurdles You May Face
First, let’s look at some common data collection hurdles your nonprofit may be facing:
- Limited resources: If you have a small budget and team to work with, it can be difficult to dedicate time to collecting, organizing, and analyzing data strategically.
- Lack of expertise: While your nonprofit doesn’t need to have a data scientist on staff to collect high-quality data, your team may not know where to begin with gathering useful information. Knowledge gaps can lead to inconsistent data collection processes, or even gathering overwhelming amounts of data that aren’t actually useful.
- Privacy concerns: Protecting sensitive data, such as information about vulnerable populations or donors’ payment information, requires strong security measures, which your organization may struggle to implement unless you have the right procedures in place.
- Inadequate tools: Outdated or limited technology tools can hinder your ability to collect and analyze data efficiently.
- Too many tools: Sometimes, new tools are introduced for some purpose or other, but they may not all work together and you may struggle to get the insights you need.
- Difficulties encouraging participation: You may need to ask donors, volunteers, or beneficiaries for data, such as feedback on certain services or events, but getting these groups to follow through can be challenging.
How to Overcome Your Data Collection Challenges
1. Define your data collection goals.
Begin by defining your data collection goals. Letting your mission be your guide, nail down what you want to accomplish by collecting high-quality data. Here are a few examples of what might come to mind for your organization:
- Improve decision-making in areas like strategic planning and resource allocation.
- Measure the effectiveness of programs and services to ensure they meet their intended goals.
- Understand donors more fully to effectively tailor fundraising campaigns to their needs and preferences.
- Provide transparent evidence of how your organization uses its funding and other resources..
- Track trends in beneficiary need to adjust your strategies and better deliver your programs.
To avoid overwhelming your team, pick just one or two things you’d like to accomplish at a time. This will allow you to identify the data that is currently most crucial for your organization to collect rather than trying to gather data on everything at once.
For example, say that one of your priorities is understanding your donors better and communicating with them more effectively, specifically those who are members of your monthly giving program. This helps you narrow the scope of data points to collect down to things like donor demographics, donation frequency and amount, donor retention and churn rates, preferred communication channels, and feedback about why they prefer giving monthly.
2. Choose the right data collection methods.
Next, iron out which data collection methods you’ll use.
According to UpMetrics’ impact measurement guide, you should plan to collect two complementary types of data—quantitative and qualitative.
- Quantitative data refers to data that can be given a numeric value. In the monthly giving program example above, frequency, donation amounts, total giving by year or donor’s life time and donor retention rate are examples of quantitative data.
- Qualitative data is data that captures qualities, characteristics, experiences, and behaviors in a descriptive or narrative form. Feedback and testimonials from monthly donors are examples of qualitative data.
To collect both types of data, consider existing data sources you can leverage. For example, for quantitative data, turn to existing records in your organization’s CRM, financial reports, and website and social media platform analytics. Don’t overlook the value of publicly available data, either, such as government agency reports or academic studies. For qualitative data, look to any surveys, donor interviews, or focus groups you’ve conducted.
It’s normal to still have gaps in your data after exhausting existing sources. Begin drawing insights from the information you have while planning to gather more data, whether that means sending out a new survey, calling a few donors, or more proactively recording details in your CRM over the next few months.
3. Ensure buy-in from groups you need to collect data from.
If you need the cooperation of others to gather additional data, you’ll need to take steps to encourage buy-in and participation. Here are some ideas for getting the information you need from donors, volunteers, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders:
- Be transparent about what you’re using the information for. Honesty is always the best policy when collecting data from others. Explain what you’ll be doing with the information and, more importantly, how it will help you further your cause. Go the extra mile by reporting what you accomplished with the information when you finish your analysis and application.
- Make it easy to provide information. It should be quick and simple for people to provide the information you seek. This will likely involve streamlining feedback forms, using clear and accessible instructions, and keeping in-person and phone conversations short and to the point.
- Use data collection as a meaningful touchpoint. Reframe data collection from a chore to a moment of connection with whatever group you’re gathering information from. For instance, if you’re looking for ways to engage with your monthly donors, you might send out a survey asking for feedback on why they prefer to give monthly, how often they like to hear from you, and follow up with an email thanking them for their continued support. You can even ask them for their date of birth to help recognize their birthday. All of these are examples of how your donors will feel seen and valued as individuals during the data collection process.
- Ensure privacy and confidentiality. Those you collect data from may need reassurance that your organization will protect the information they share, especially if it is sensitive in nature. Clearly explain how your organization will secure the information, and encourage individuals to come to you with questions or concerns.
If appropriate, you may also try incentivizing individuals to share information with your organization. For example, you might enter the first 30 people to complete a feedback survey into a drawing for a gift card to a local restaurant. Or, you might send focus group participants sweatshirts or t-shirts branded to your organization as a thank-you for their time. Mind you, typically donors are happy to provide feedback so you often will not need any incentives at all.
4. Implement a robust data management process.
When it comes to nonprofit data, most conversations revolve around how to collect it, analyze it, and leverage it. However, these conversations often miss a crucial in-between step: managing the data you collect.
In theory, the information you collect could just live in spreadsheets or other documents until you’re ready to use it. But the reality is that your nonprofit needs to keep its data clean and organized for it to be useful in the long term.
To be proactive in how you manage your data, follow these best practices as outlined by NPOInfo’s nonprofit data hygiene guide:
- Audit your organization’s database and other data storage tools to pinpoint unhelpful or harmful information or inconsistencies in your data.
- Remove unnecessary or harmful information. In your CRM, this might include contact information for people who have opted out of communications with your nonprofit or information for minors, incarcerated individuals, or the deceased. The main idea here is to remove any information that could put your organization at risk or simply take up space that could be used for more useful information.
Be mindful though and know what your state privacy requirements are. In most cases, you are typically better off flagging someone’s record to ensure that you can suppress them from any type of communication. If you simply remove the donor, you will not have any record moving forward.
- Closely examine the data you have left to eliminate duplicate entries, verify important details, and ensure that you standardize certain information (such as addresses) across your organization so that it’s easy to understand and use.
Once you’ve conducted an initial “cleaning” of your organization’s data, minimize the chances of having issues moving forward by training your team on how to best input data and correct errors. And with turnover in nonprofits, create a standard document so that you have a basis to go on while updating it as needed. Having everyone on the same page will go a long way in helping you maintain useful records for years to come.
Whether you’re facing fundraising challenges, planning for the new fiscal year, or hoping to report to your stakeholders on your organization’s overall effectiveness, you’ll need access to high-quality data that paints a clear picture of your organization’s community and operations. Use the tips in this guide to improve how your organization collects data, and value the importance of implementing robust data management practices.
