Data as a strategic asset to drive donor engagement
Drive donor engagement and mission outcomes by leveraging your data as a strategic asset.
As outlined in the first trend, data is the foundation for driving donor engagement. And, as bold as it sounds, integrated data—particularly on organizational objectives and mission impact—are at the core of your nonprofit’s success. Imagine driving a car without a dashboard. This is similar to running an organization without information on critical performance and decision-making elements.
While this may seem obvious, when an organization grows organically and must decide which systems to fund first, data can become siloed, preventing a holistic understanding of whether you’re progressing as planned. While the number of technology solutions and ways to get streamlined systems and processes with limited resources can be overwhelming, you likely don’t have to overhaul your entire tech stack to reach your goals.
Your systems serve your organizational objectives, so focus first on your strategic priorities and the best path forward to centralized data. For example, a grantmaking organization may have disparate systems, but the most critical visibility is the funding coming in and grants going out to get an end-to-end view of dollars flowing through the organization. Or, a foundation could recognize that grantees cannot effectively engage, so building a portal for two-way engagement and donor feedback tracking becomes the top priority.
Whether shifting from on-prem to cloud computing, or revisiting your constituent relationship management (CRM) solution, your data and technology should serve your goals and help drive donor insights, impact measurement, and optimize human and organizational resources to ensure every dollar moves the needle toward your strategic goals. This doesn’t have to consume your entire budget. Start by asking if your current CRM meets your spending needs and goals and if you’re taking advantage of benefits from your solution provider, such as Salesforce’s Power of Us Program, Microsoft’s nonprofit offers, and AWS’s workshops and credits for nonprofits.
Additionally, with the rise of AI and machine learning (ML), organizations are sitting on a potential gold mine of data, comprising years of unanalyzed and unrealized insights. AI allows us to identify trends in our mission area easily, harvest valuable insights from languishing data, and develop new ways of communicating and presenting data without the costs associated with cutting-edge analytical skills.
DOG GUIDES: THE POWER OF UNLEASHING A PERSON’S POTENTIAL
The Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides empowers Canadians with disabilities by providing them with a dog guide at no cost, helping them navigate the world with a greater sense of confidence and independence. When COVID-19 hit, the organization faced a major dilemma: all the information on clients, dogs, and donors resided in physical files, requiring team members to retrieve the paperwork from the organization’s main office in Oakville. As they assessed their risks and needs, Dog Guides’ immediate priorities were getting the main processes into Salesforce, creating a website, migrating data, and tailoring solutions for some of the organization’s unique challenges. This included customizing a dog and client tracker app that captured all the vital data points, allowing the organization to see the end-to-end lifecycle for both dogs and clients in one place.
Learn more about this case study.
“It wasn’t just giving them a CRM—it was changing the way they approach how they support their community… Now it’s this beautiful chart in Salesforce that dictates all of the numbers in a digestible way.”
Alysa McCarty, Slalom Canada
