Data analytics trends for 2022

In recent years charities have been focusing on ways to ramp up their analysis of data. This is a trend that will continue into 2022, as data analytics is increasingly used to inform charity leaders around the best use of service delivery, fundraising, marketing, and more.

 

From accessing the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud to tackling gaps in knowledge and keeping up with innovations in the private sector, there is plenty for charities to consider around their use of data in the coming months.

 

Here we look at the trends set to dominate the charity sector.

 

 

Catching up with the private sector

 

2022 will see a greater focus on the charity sector to tackle gaps in data to maximise its effectiveness and prove its value to politicians and funders. Crucially this will see the charity sector focus much more on competing with innovations in the private sector.

 

This drive to bolster data analytics has emerged as a key theme from think tank Pro Bono Economics charity sector research project the Law Family Commission on Civil Society.

 

Research published in October 2021 by the Commission found that the charity sector is blighted by gaps in data analytics that are holding it back, particularly in proving the collective value of the voluntary sector itself, to the economy and society.

 

It warns that too much of charity data analytics “is stuck in unreadable formats” and is lagging behind the private sector’s use of statistics.

 

It is calling for “social economy satellite accounts” to be created by government so that official statistics on charities’ contribution to the economy are published and compared with private business’ economic data.

 

“There is a chasm between the information we have on businesses and the information we have on charities right now,” says Pro Bono Economics research and policy director Anoushka Kenley.

 

Being proposed is the setting up of a social sector data standards and co-ordination working group, involving charities and government to help the sector catch up with businesses in their data analytics. The setting up of this group has been backed by charity sector leaders.

 

 

Continue innovating with AI

 

AI has been a force for good for charities, helping them to better understand their data and create a raft of automated service delivery tools such as chatbots. This will continue into 2022.

 

AI will increasingly help charities create better learning algorithms, interpretable systems and speed up almost every aspect of their organisation. Charities will begin to rely much more on machine learning and the benefits of AI than ever before.

 

Among emerging innovations to allow this will be using AI as a service (AlaaS). This refers to off-the-shelf AI tools to help charities and other organisations use AI techniques at a fraction of the cost if implementing the use of this technology in-house.

 

AlaaS can be bought by a third-party specialist and tweaked to fit the best needs of the charity. Going into 2022 this will increasingly address the prohibitive cost of developing AI for many charities, as well as a shortage of skilled AI specialists in the sector.