In every industry, data is collected and reported. Still, far too often, these reports become more of a formality rather than an action guide. Nonprofit analytics are extremely useful and can help make decisions, small and large. So how do you know the best reports to generate and use your findings and analysis reports to steer your actions?
It all starts with data management. Effective data management is key to growing your nonprofit. Data can help you understand your supporters and build better fundraising and engagement strategies. Data can also help you understand and better allocate your team’s time and resources. But before you can take advantage of the information stored in your nonprofit software, you need to know exactly what analytics to track in the first place.
What is Analytics for nonprofits?
Nonprofit data analytics is the process of collecting data and analyzing it. The goal is to use analytics to uncover trends and understand performance to help nonprofits make informed decisions and guide the next steps to achieve fundraising and mission goals.
Why is data analytics important for nonprofits?
Data analytics is important because it provides direction for organizations to more effectively and efficiently reach their goals. Analyzing data can improve:
- Fundraising
- Recruiting and retaining supporters
- Recruiting and retaining volunteers
- Understanding and improving campaign and initiative results
- Tracking and understanding goal progress
- Accountability
- Budgeting and forecasting for future initiatives, campaigns, and projects
- Gaining Board support or buy-in
For nonprofits, data analytics is crucial to ensure they’re allocating funds efficiently and responsibly to their mission as possible.
How To Begin Analyzing Nonprofit Data
When your organization is ready to begin analyzing your data or updating your current practices, consider the following tips:
- Choose the right metrics to measure and analyze. There are unlimited metrics you can track— if you collect the data, you can analyze it. However, not all metrics will be useful for your organization’s strategy. Focus on the data that will help your organization reach its goals, and choose those by working backward from your goals. So, for example, if you’re hoping to increase major gifts, focus on major gift-related metrics.
- Develop a process for collecting, tracking, and analyzing data. Many nonprofits struggle with manual data collection, entry, and organization, which leads to collecting a lot of data that isn’t usable. When juggling disparate spreadsheets or many technologies that don’t speak to each other, it’s common for data to get lost or forgotten. You’ll want your CRM and other nonprofit technologies to integrate seamlessly. Now integrating a tech stack is easier said than done. consider selecting a nonprofit technology solution such as Giveffect, an all-in-one software suite, so your data will flow into your most comprehensive database.
- Conduct data hygiene efforts to keep information clean. This includes removing duplicate entries, updating incorrect and inaccurate information, and ensuring all data is input in a standardized manner. While you may need to begin with one major “cleanup,” the goal should be to develop ongoing data hygiene procedures to maintain database integrity as you add more information. Giveffect, for example, has hygiene features built right in to detect duplicates automatically.
Nonprofit goal setting is key
Every nonprofit and every department or function within a nonprofit should have defined goals to work towards. And to set those goals, you must ask: What do you want to achieve? What are the critical issues that you’re working to solve?
These are often decided on in leadership discussions. Once your objectives are agreed upon, you must determine what success looks like and how to measure it in your nonprofit analytics.
Focusing on the right data
Take a critical look at what your goals are and what actual success looks like. Consider if the key performance indicators fit the goals you have or your project.
For example, if you are focusing on a new fundraising event for a group of new donors, the key metric would be “new donors.” If you’re looking at volunteer retention, you may want to look at a few key indicators, including “volunteer shifts completed” and volunteer communication engagement, such as email opens. And compare such reports to a prior time period, such as to the prior quarter or prior year.
Making a difficult job easier
While no one can do the difficult work of making the assessments for you, you can get a great deal of support in obtaining your nonprofit analytics. That’s what Giveffect can do.
Support from a system that can give you a huge variety of numbers that can be broken down into a multitude of different ways, almost as quickly as you can come up with ideas, is a huge advantage.
You can create reports across volunteers, fundraising, events, and donors. Cross-reference the reports to see, for example, how many volunteers are also donors. Or see how many key donors attended a particular event. And you can go even deeper.
In fact, Giveffect hosted a webinar on this “how-to” topic to use nonprofit analytics to make your team work more efficiently to meet your goals. Experts will show you how to go deeper into your numbers integration and segmentation strategies to build better workflows. Watch the webinar replay.
That’s the real impact of nonprofit analytics.
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Learn more about how Giveffect can help you organize and report on your data to guide your next steps. Reach your goals with Giveffect. Book a demo today.
This article was updated on January 20, 2023. It was originally published on September 16, 2021.