Data silos: What they are and why charities need to break them

The term ’data silo’ is common techy-sounding jargon that’s thrown around as a problem to be tackled in many charities. But what exactly does it mean in real terms? When data within a charity is ’siloed’, it’s marooned in unconnected systems, is not being shared across teams or departments, and can’t easily be accessed by other parts of the organisation that need it.

Of course, not everyone needs access to all the information in an organisation, and security measures such as user access management mean that some siloes are deliberate. But when something impedes the flow of data from one system to another, this can mean that important insights are missed that could improve a charity’s decision making and help it innovate and grow.

For charities that want to make better use of data to support the choices they make and improve fundraising and service delivery, siloed data is a wasted resource that means potentially transformative pieces of the puzzle are being swept under the rug.

United we stand, divided we fall...

Here’s an example: The marketing team may send out emails using email automation software like MailChimp or Charity Digital Mail. An events team uses Eventbrite to invite people to the upcoming fundraising event. And the finance team uses a spreadsheet to record giving data.

Each individual team might have some great reporting on how well they are performing. But if the data from these systems isn’t married up, nobody will be able to see the entire journey that a donor takes as they interact with the charity. This leaves them unable to ask more creative questions like ’who’s attending our events, and can we tailor our fundraising communications to target those demographics?’ and ’How can we align what we know about our donors and their giving behaviours with our email lists to segment them by preferred frequency and amounts to ask for?’

As well as answering questions, a more joined-up data ecosystem can help charities uncover problems, patterns and correlations that they wouldn’t previously have uncovered or thought to look for, and fix them.

So how can charities solve the lack of a transparent, open view of their data? It comes down to these factors:

Culture

Data siloes usually happen organically over time, as an inevitable result of different departments choosing the software that meets their needs. The process of fixing these resulting data siloes becomes costly and time consuming the longer it goes on, and so the sooner you can start working towards a better system the better.

Nurturing a culture of collaboration and communication between your teams can really help. Marketing company HubSpot explained how they managed to do this by creating a ’Culture Code’ which helps embed its values around transparency and openness into everyday operations.

Open fundraising data organisation 360 Giving explains how charities can kick-start a ’data culture’ that gets everyone in their organisation thinking together strategically about the data they use and collect.