Many organizations have already tackled the basics of data collection by doing a good job of tracking the performance of their programs—documenting the number of clients served, dollars invested, volunteers involved, or other similar units of service.
But moving to the next level—understanding how those services and investments change lives and communities—can seem daunting at first.
It doesn’t have to be. Taking the same kind of practical approach that organizations use for other projects also works well for implementing an evaluation. Developing a more data-driven culture is possible for all types of nonprofits, from smaller community-based groups to larger citywide or regional ones.
1. Plan: Decide what is most valuable to measure. It helps to have a vision of the end product—what questions will you be able to answer, how will you use the data, who else has done this whom you might use as a model? Organizations can ask themselves questions such as these:
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What are the primary changes we are trying to achieve for the people or places we serve? For example, a financial-coaching program might determine that it is most interested in following how clients use their budgets, increase savings, or reduce debt. A neighborhood-revitalization initiative might be most concerned with how its vacant-property program is affecting safety and other neighborhood quality-of-life factors.
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Do these initial results lead to other, longer-term changes? For example, when a homeless family is housed, what else is likely to occur for the children, family, and community?
2. Develop a practical data-collection plan. Take time to map out the exact data you are going to collect, how often the data need to be collected, and the best ways to gather the information. These are important building blocks of a data culture.
Measuring a few things well and consistently over time is much better than measuring everything you are interested in knowing. Organizations with very big data appetites frequently get overwhelmed by the effort and either don’t complete a full evaluation cycle or scale back their plans. Matching your data-collection plan to your resources is key.
3. Integrate data collection into program delivery, or organize a special project. When data can be gathered in the natural flow of service delivery, it is most likely to be gathered consistently over time. This is easiest for programs that serve clients directly.
However, if the data you need would best be collected by a survey of community residents, think of the data collection as a special project and organize staff members or volunteers to do a door-to-door survey or use another method. Nonprofits can take this on alone or with partners.
4. Analyze your data and apply it to ongoing work. Once you have a basic tally of the data you have collected, taking the time to really think about what it means in the context of your programs and community is key. Often, these data trigger a new set of questions. It is most valuable when you learn things that you can apply directly to your program delivery or organizational strategies, as well as to use for reporting or fundraising purposes.
For example, in an evaluation of financial coaching, when several organizations learned to their surprise that client debt was not primarily due to credit-card use, they were able to quickly shift gears and address student-loan and medical debt.
5. Communicate results. Finally, you get to share data that demonstrate your results in new ways.
For example, instead of only presenting how many financial-coaching clients your organization served last year, you could also cite how their financial status and behaviors have changed by including the percentage of clients who developed budgets and established regular savings plans, or the decrease in participants’ debt and increase in credit scores. This provides the basis for a compelling story of your organization’s impact.
Maggie Grieve is vice president ofSuccess Measures, an evaluation resource group at NeighborWorks America, offering consulting services, measurement tools, and technology to help nonprofits measure the impact of their work in communities across the country. Ms. Grieve helped create Success Measures in collaboration with practitioners seeking to evaluate community-development outcomes.