What's the state of the sector?
Data maturity in 2024
This year we celebrated five years of assessing sector data maturity.
Our Data Maturity Assessment has proven value in helping organisations understand how they’re doing with data and how they can get better. We’re delighted to have helped over 1,000 organisations of all shapes and sizes to measure and benchmark their progress. The success of our approach in engaging, educating and motivating staff in the process is bearing fruit, as they focus their efforts on improving with data.
Having captured almost 12,000 peoples’ views around data in their organisation over the last five years, we have a deep and rich perspective on data maturity. Our 2024 State of the Sector Data Maturity report reveals some interesting insights from this treasure trove of data.
It finds:
There’s no significant difference in overall data maturity between the not-for-profit, public, and commercial sectors. There are leaders and laggers in every sector, most are in the learning and early developing stages.
There has been progress over time, though it’s slow (and those that have re-assessed along the way show it’s not necessarily a linear journey).
There’s been much progress in Culture and an increase in purpose-related data Uses and Analysis. This is influencing both outward-facing service/product applications, as well as internal/core development and running of organisations.
Practical aspects like Tools and Data have shown some improvement.
There’s been little progress in Leadership and none at all in Skills.
Public sector vs not-for-profits
In this year’s report we take a closer look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of the public sector and not-for-profit sector. Our analysis reveals differences in: leadership attitudes; confidence in data quality; and behaviours around security and protection. It also shows differences in the complexity of data analysis and sophistication of tools for exploring past, present and forward looking perspectives, as well as differences in the use of advanced tools for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.
The skills gap
The most important finding is that, in every sector, Skills is the biggest weakness. The gaps are evident at every level: in leadership, in specialist technical capabilities and in the broader data literacy of staff across the organisation.
Opportunities for improvement
Given the common challenges and contexts in which the not-for-profit sector (aka civil society) and public sector operate, the opportunity for a joined up approach is wide-open. We see real opportunities for continuing to advance data maturity in the sector, by working together and taking collaborative approaches.
Most excitingly, these ambitions for building data maturity at scale are starting to bud (maybe even blossom?). More strategic approaches to building data capabilities are beginning to emerge. Cohorts of organisations in similar sectors, places, or contexts are using our tool to explore data maturity more broadly and developing innovative, collaborative approaches.
If you’re interested in hearing about cross-sector strategic approaches from Scottish Government, Greater Manchester and UK youth homelessness organisations, come along to hear from our fantastic speakers: Shona Nicol, Head of Data Standards and Sally Kerr, Data Transformation Lead at Scottish Government; Emma Ansell-Mehan, Strategic Lead (Population Health) at 10GM; and Nicholas Connolly, Chief Executive and Founder at EveryYouth, in our webinar ‘Building data maturity at scale’, 12-1 on Wednesday 27 November.
This will be of special interest to funders, policy makers, capacity builders, infrastructure bodies, networks and membership organisations.
Catch up
If you missed the launch of this year’s State of the Sector report, you can catch up with the webinar recording now….
Launch event recording: State of the Sector - Data Maturity in the Nonprofit Sector 2024
Onwards and upwards
For our part, Data Orchard will continue to focus on building capacity and skills around data, and work with partners to address the challenges of data maturity in the nonprofit sector. Do get in touch if you would like to support us, to collaborate on our mission, or explore how we might help your organisation.
If you’re a leader and you’d like to build your knowledge and confidence around data, do sign up for one of our Data for Nonprofit Leaders courses in early 2025, or come along to the course preview at noon on Wednesday 20th November.