Reassessing the importance of data in a Post-COVID-19 World

Identify your goals

Figuring out how to use and maximise your data is key. Operations such as fundraising, comms and more collect data as part of their daily work.

You can make the most of it by developing a data strategy based on key questions:

• What is your goal? It could be increasing your reach, identifying barriers or specialising support
• What data do you need? It could be details of beneficiaries, how they access your services, their feedback
• How will you collect the required data? There are multiple tools available to capture data

Once you have the data, you can start making valuable discoveries.

Strategies for success

With so much data available, you need a data strategy to supercharge your findings. An effective data strategy can help you make decisions based on hard facts from CRMs and social media analytics. It can also help you review existing data strategies.

Getting more data

You can increase the amount of data available by taking a fresh approach to operations. Switching in-person events to virtual ones allow charities to capture lots of data on supporters and donors, even potential leads for support and digital donations. Let’s see how:

The registration process provides lots of key insights into supporters: age, gender, and location can help tailor key marketing and comms. You can also review email open-rates and click-through rates to examine your email content. By collecting registration data, you can send personalised emails closer to the event which are more likely to be opened.

You can also deploy real-time polling and surveys to collect immediate feedback. Virtual event software can help you do more via apps, social media integration, live chat and more all of which can enrich your data and extend your reach. You can check out inexpo, WorkCast, and iVent.

Terrific trends

Fundraising data analysis shows people who have donated before are most likely to donate again, revealing that a database of previous donors is extremely valuable for measuring support and pinpointing potential future donors.

You can use constituent relationship management (CRM) system such as Salesforce for Nonprofits to track amounts, dates and frequency of donations to research effective digital fundraising methods and consider options such as direct-debits for repeat donations. Sending out surveys can be useful too.

Leaping over hurdles

There can be stumbling blocks on any journey. A data journey requires planning and ongoing work. To avoid difficulty, beware of these scenarios:

• Unclear direction and vague goals: make sure you sharply define and delineate the problem and your solution
  
  
• Siloed and separated data: bring all of your data into one central location to ensure it is not stuck in different departments
  
  
• Poor quality data: inconsistent, partial or disorganised data needs to be cleaned up so it is fit for purpose
  
  
• You need training: organisations like DataKind UK and Data Orchard help provide expertise and help charities deploy data science

There is help out there for charities to begin their data journey. You can embrace the information that you already have to enrich your processes, extend your reach and further your cause.