Imagine for a moment that you’re a hardworking development team member with a never-ending list of regular projects.
A meeting pops into your calendar. It’s from your Chief Development Officer and is entitled “Analytics for Board Meeting.” or you get a Teams chat from the Chief Program Officer asking for “Year to Date Performance to Goal Insights for field staff.” You groan. It can’t possibly be that time again already.
Every year, the process gets more complex. You pull more data points from your CRM and other databases, analyze and create logical connections, and turn them into visualizations that help your leadership see the story of your year.
What if I told you that Annual Report season doesn’t need to be this hard? What if you could give your leaders immediate access to the data they need, in a format they can understand, without manual intervention?
It’s time to democratize your data. Give your C-suite one dashboard to rule them all—because insights shouldn’t require a scavenger hunt.
1. Think about your data, not your databases
Start by understanding that your CRM is likely one of several sources of crucial data within your organization. Where does your data reside? Is it in a consumable format? Does your data team have reliable and repeatable access to it?
2. Think about your stakeholders, not their unexpected report requests
It’s essential to identify all the stakeholders in your organization who would benefit from an environment of data empowerment. What data do Major Gift Officers need, and how do they use it? What about those in charge of donor retention? What information does your ED need? Marketing? IT?
Those ad hoc data pulls like the annual report fire drill are a great place to start.
3. Map, model, visualize
Now that you’ve defined what, where, and who, it’s time to for the how. This involves defining a strategy to transform your raw data points in their multiple locations of origin to being a component of the insightful visualizations within a comprehensive dashboard that is consistently accessible to your stakeholders. This requires thinking holistically—not everything is going to be accessible in a CRM field or fundraising tool. At Heller Consulting, we develop Data Dictionaries that map all the key information sources held in your organization, and use them to develop a data strategy that determines how information is captured, transformed, and managed.
Once you have an idea of what your data is for and where it is held, you can plan for access.
4. Build automated real-time reports and dashboards
The key to data transparency and accessibility is transforming individual data points into reports and dashboards that your stakeholders can use to get insights consistently. Only by understanding and modeling your data can you start to pull the right data together into dashboards that update in real time. Many CRMs have dashboarding capabilities but they will only be useful if the people who need them are frequent users of that system. Remember: Your ED doesn’t need a CRM seat, what she needs is the insights.
At Heller Consulting, we love Microsoft Power BI for this purpose, since it can seamlessly integrate data from sources as disparate as spreadsheets, databases, fundraising software, and custom applications, without the need for technical expertise.
It has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, which means organizations can transform complex data into visually compelling reports that track key performance indicators, donor engagement, program outcomes, and financial metrics in real-time. And it leverages Microsoft’s security layer, meaning your IT team can control access across the organization.
We have built a number of automated dashboards that pull data from disparate systems such as Raiser’s Edge, Microsoft Dynamics, and various SharePoint files into self-service dashboards accessible to major giving teams while they’re out on the road.
Self-service reports democratize data and reduce manual work
By automating reports and dashboards, you are giving your data stakeholders real-time access to the insights they need. Not only does that mean fewer ad hoc requests coming from the C Suite but ideally better decision making, because your leaders will have access to real-time data themselves.
“Playing” with dashboards and reports to compare different datasets will help them understand their organization better and make informed decisions based on the latest data available to them.
Get in touch to see how Heller Consulting can help you democratize your data today.
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Business Lead, Microsoft and Blackbaud Practices
Karen has over 25 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations to support their missions through technological innovation. Her expertise includes software development, Oracle database administration, CRM implementations, custom API integrations, development operations, and professional services. Karen aims to apply her diverse technology background to assist Heller clients in optimizing their technology investments.
Karen is dedicated to helping organizations define processes and leverage technology to create an ecosystem that optimizes their fundraising potential and advances their mission. She enjoys collaborating with client staff at all levels to thoroughly understand the needs of the organization.
Karen enjoys traveling with her family, seeing Broadway shows, and teaching fitness classes.
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