The Five Core Elements of Nonprofit Organizational Wellness: Part 5

Four steps to transform the way you use analytics to drive growth

by Rebecca Wiggins

Throughout this blog series, we are focusing on each of Five to Flow’s core elements from the lens of nonprofit organizations to help improve the sustainability and impact of your mission. In Part 1, we focused on people – both internal staff development and donor engagement. In Part 2 of the series, we addressed the need to establish consistent processes for improved efficiency and effectiveness. Part 3 dug deeper into culture development and creating an inclusive environment. Part 4 addressed the technology challenges and opportunities for nonprofits.

I want to challenge executives, leaders, shareholders, and board members to consider something. Not all contributors to employee disengagement have to do with attitude, skillset, resiliency, the age/generation of the worker, or the company culture. In fact, in my experience, it’s more about the barriers and obstacles put in an employee’s way so they actually can’t just focus and get sh*t done. Most employees desire jobs that challenge them and provide purpose in their lives. They want to contribute to the success of their team and the overall company. Individual and team achievements – as well as learning together from failure – is how they can make progress, innovate, and tap into creativity. It is how they can exit that feeling of struggling and move forward. Unfortunately, though, they are working in a world where:

According to the recent Salesforce Nonprofit Trends Report:

34% reported that decisions are based on data and evidence
31% are using data to accurately forecast income from fundraising/development campaigns
33% are able to personalize communications to segments of their stakeholders, and
69% indicated that sharing data across departments is a challenge

Before we dig into solutions and recommendations, it is important to start by understanding the different types of analytics to develop a more intentional and meaningful strategy:

Descriptive: provides context for how something has changed over time (revenue, program engagement, donor contributions over the last five years)
Diagnostic: identifies the root cause or correlations to understand why something happened (marketing campaign effectiveness to drive new memberships or registrations)
Predictive: anticipates future outcomes based on past data (estimating increase or decrease in budget expenditures based on changes in registration levels)
Prescriptive: creates possible scenarios for strategic decision making (budgeting, forecasting, cost-benefit analysis)

Nonprofits most commonly track financial and fundraising data, or website and social media traffic. Additional data collection is often driven by grant program requirements or collected sporadically without a holistic data management strategy that is linked to the overall mission and vision of the organization. In many cases, organizations may collect a lot of data, but it may not be updated or maintained properly. Especially for nonprofits with limited resources, it is important to start with a clear data management strategy to determine what needs to be collected and why, as well as what the organization will do with the data.

Once a strategy and process are in place, nonprofits will better understand the preferences and needs of different segments of stakeholders, improve communications and fundraising efforts, track and predict recruitment and retention outcomes, and build realistic financial models to anticipate the needs of the organization in the future.

While it may sound technical and scary, data and analytics are essential to driving organizational agility, efficiency, and strategic growth. The good news is, it also doesn’t have to be complicated:

Step 1: start by creating a list of meaningful metrics that demonstrate the health of your organization – it could be anything from the number of new members per week or month to membership retention, social media followers, new donor prospects, or revenue levels.

Step 2: track and report on those metrics during weekly department or team meetings to evaluate what is working (and why) and where you need to make adjustments.

Step 3: Look for trends and anomalies in real-time and make better predictions of what might happen in the future.

Step 4: Use the data to support your strategy, adjust or tweak your tactics, or try something new. Your decisions will be more timely and strategic, enabling growth.

Here are a few suggestions for how to use data and analytics within your nonprofit:

Define and regularly track the key metrics that are most important to your organization, Board, and partners to determine what is working well and where you need to make adjustments.
Build time on the front end of project planning to determine the most strategic data needed to collect, track, and analyze.
Improve donor management or member engagement by utilizing predictive analytics. Review characteristics and past information about these stakeholders to understand preferences, better predict behavior, and maximize participation and giving.
Use your data to tell a compelling story about your growth and impact through engaging and memorable visuals.
Develop and adhere to data security processes along with specific policies to guide document and data retention and destruction for things like gifts and conflicts of interest for the organization and any affiliates.

Above all, stay curious about your data and use it to make strategic decisions and changes based on the trends. Flow and organization wellness can be found at the convergence of these five essential core elements. While it may feel overwhelming, start by taking the Wellness Wave to determine which areas need the most attention. Read more about the core elements on our website, and reach out to connect with us. We are passionate about helping organizations go below the surface to reach their fullest potential and love the work they do. Your future begins now!