RE:Thinking Philanthropy is the NY Funders Alliance blog featuring postings from both inside our office and from the broad world of philanthropy. October’s second post is written by Mark Larimer from Foundant Technologies.
Philanthropic organizations each have different goals when it comes to using data. Some simply want to have a good understanding of their own data to help drive better funding decisions and be able to track impact. Others want to be able to leverage data from outside of their organization to avoid making bad decisions and understand how they should be tracking their impact before even starting on the funder journey. Grantseekers might want to know which funders are most likely to support their causes or what the funding success of similar nonprofits to their own has been in a certain geographical area. And grantmakers might want to know if other funders in their area are supporting similar projects so they can leverage their collective resources for better impact. Regardless of the individual goals, the end goal is to make philanthropy better.
However, it’s difficult to meet any goal without the proper tools and preparation. A few years ago we were still talking about keeping data clean and current, which is still important, but now we need to talk about using the data that’s already in place.
Data only works if…
Having data in a useable format is essential to achieving the kind of tracking, predicting, collaboration, etc. that we’re looking for… and that starts with you. Before even entertaining the idea of tracking and using data, you need to know what data you should be tracking.
“TRACK ALL THE DATA!!” – said no successful grants manager ever. You simply can’t track every tiny detail of each of your grants, projects, or programs. It doesn’t work and you’ll just end up mired in a sea of information, feeling overwhelmed.
Instead, strictly define exactly what your objective is and work backwards from there. What things do you absolutely need to know in order to understand whether you’ve been successful… or unsuccessful? And, if you find yourself straying into that land of “all the data,” be strict! Back off and look at it again with fresh eyes.
If only there was a tool for that…
Luckily, there are already organizations like GuideStar, Foundation Center, and GreatNonprofits that are continually looking for ways to make sharing and using data easier. They make it so funders don’t have to build their own data from scratch. In fact, funders relying strictly on their own information actually creates silos of data and limits the usefulness of it across the philanthropic industry. So, before you reinvent the wheel, you might want to check out some of these tools already in place to help:
- GuideStar
- Charity Check – to verify nonprofit status
- Profiles – a place where nonprofits only have to input the data included in a typical grant application once, and then can focus on keeping the data current
- Premium – find consolidated information with greater detail than Exchange
- G4G (GuideStar for Grant Applications) – allows grant applicants to utilize data stored within their GuideStar Exchange profile to prefill parts of new grant applications, saving time and providing incentive to keep their GuideStar profile up to date
- Foundation Center – database of grantmaker data
- FDO Grant Database – free and paid subscriptions to a searchable database of grantmakers used by nonprofits
- 990 Finder – Free web based resource to find 990s of nonprofits
- Foundation Insight – free to eGrant Reporters to evaluate their own giving and paid subscriptions with the ability to search other grantmaker’s giving
- Foundation Maps – a tool to help visualize giving data across geographical regions using any number and combination of filter parameters
- GreatNonprofits
- Online Database – free, searchable database of reviews shared by people, with firsthand experience on any of the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations
On October 20th, I’ll have the privilege of diving into these data tools in more detail – and explaining what they mean for philanthropic “big data” – during a special webinar in partnership with the NY Funders Alliance. I hope you’ll join me to dig into the subject of collective data and why it’s the key to strengthening philanthropy.
After all, unless we continue to have these conversations, learn more about the tools available in the sector (and how to use them!), and share our knowledge – the “big data” that continues to grow means nothing.
About the Author:
Mark Larimer leads the Marketing and Client Services teams at Foundant Technologies. His past careers with Extended Systems and RightNow Technologies gives him the experience to understand technology… his compassion allows him to see how technology can be used to make people’s lives easier and the philanthropic sector better and more efficient.
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