Data maturity - a post-pandemic priority for charities

The pandemic has increased pressure on charities to achieve more with their limited resources; and to demonstrate those achievements to donors. In 2020, three quarters of charities have seen increased demand for their services, while suffering a decrease in the resources available to meet that demand; and two thirds are experiencing higher demand from donors for more transparent explanation of how they use their funds (1). Faced by these demands, charities have struggled to respond – limited by their access to timely, relevant and insightful data.

These are not new challenges. Before Coronavirus struck, charities were already moving towards a more commercial mindset. In response to a decline in traditional income from sources such as central funding, they were investing in data to make better decisions that improved both sustainability and demonstrable impact. However, the recent abrupt changes in everyone’s way of life has amplified the importance of data maturity, forcing an acceleration in their development of it.

When it comes to data, organisations’ focus on defensive compliance and data protection has been subsumed by a step change in the desire for transparency and operational efficacy. Early on, charities struggled to observe the effects of the pandemic on their organisation, which compromised their ability to efficiently reallocate their finite resources. In this way, the pandemic exposed the widespread data immaturity of many organisations, including many charities.

Charities’ data immaturity has been a double whammy because the data that would help them allocate their resources more effectively is also the data that would help them to encourage the generosity of their donors. The world economy has shrunk, along with donors’ disposable income; and not all charities are equally attractive. Donors are drawn to those charities who are able to demonstrate their impact (by measuring and reporting the benefits they deliver); and so those charities’ data maturity helps them twice over.

However, this absence of data maturity has not been universal. Charities have carefully curated a proportion of the data they need, for the purposes of regulatory and statutory requirements (e.g. filings with the Charity Commission, or the Care Quality Commission). Such well-cared-for data shows what is possible, given sufficient motivation.

So where should charities begin, if they are to increase their data maturity and reap the benefits of more insightful, timely and available data? Well, an important first step is to appreciate that not all data is equal. Some data matters more than others, and concentrating on this data will reduce the size of the challenge into more manageable ‘slices’.

Equally important is the realisation that data is not a niche subject for an unintelligible few who can be left in a windowless room far from the rest of the organisation, with large datasets and powerful machines so that they might ‘read the runes’ of complex graphs and charts. An organisation’s level of data maturity depends on much more than that. It depends on leadership. It depends on governance and process. It depends on culture and values; and most importantly, it depends on the level of literacy of the organisation’s most data illiterate employees. Data maturity is a team sport. So the big question for every charity now is – is your organisation about to leave the field of play?

For more discussion of our point of view, click here and here to listen to our podcasts on the subject.

References:

(1) ‘Non-profits trends report, 2nd edition’ – Salesforce Research, 2020

This post was originally written by Philip Richardson.