Five things to think about for your non-profit's data strategy

 
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A data strategy

At Data Orchard CIC we are probably best known for our work on data maturity in non-profits. We are pretty obsessed by data maturity and hundreds of non-profit organisations have used our online assessment tool to measure their own data maturity.

Knowing where you are in terms of data maturity is all very well but it's only really useful if you're interested in getting better at using data. And, in fact, our mission is not to obsess about data maturity but to ‘help organisations get better with data’. We see data maturity assessment as a really important tool in that improvement journey (see our Theory of Change for more on this) and we often work with non-profits to help them develop a data strategy.

Here are some of the key things that I have found it is useful to think about when developing a data strategy for your organisation.

1. You need to know where the organisation wants to go

A data strategy lays out your priorities in terms of data to help the organisation achieve the outcomes it wants. To even start thinking about a data strategy the organisation must have a clear idea of what it is to seeking to achieve.

Different organisations state this in different ways (corporate strategy, business plan, 5 year strategy for example). The name is not important. What is important is that you know exactly what the organisation is trying to achieve.

If you don't have something that states clearly the impact the organisation is trying to have, stop working on a data strategy and start working on the corporate strategy.

2. You need to know where the organisation is now

Conceptually a data strategy is pretty straightforward. Work out where you are now. Work out where you want to get to. Plot the optimum course from here to there.

How can you work out where you are now? Well, perhaps inevitably, I'm going to recommend you take a data maturity assessment. Our free tool asks you a series of questions and then maps the answers against our data maturity framework. We developed the framework after a great deal of in-depth research with non-profit organisations in Wales and England.

A small organisation could get its whole team together for a short workshop and complete the assessment using the free tool. A larger organisation would probably need a bit more functionality (but luckily we've got that covered too with our organisational version).

The key information you get from a data maturity assessment is which of the seven themes of data maturity you are strongest on and which you are weakest on. I find these themes very helpful when thinking about data strategy because they ensure you don't see it as simply a technical strategy but think about skills, culture, leadership and uses.

3. Imagine the future organisation in terms of data

This is where the rubber really starts to hit the road. The corporate strategy lays out where you want to be. What does that mean in terms of data? An organisation trying to increase customer satisfaction will need to understand a lot about its customers both quantitatively and qualitatively. An organisation wanting to transform its service offering will need very good data on impact and the ability to model how different service changes might have different impacts.

What each organisation will need in terms of data will be particular to each organisation. Working out what the organisation needs is where the data strategist's skill starts to come in to play.

4. Strategy means saying no to an awful lot of fun things

A strategy, if it is any use at all, is a choice. An effective strategy can be very short but it should help everyone understand the small number of things it is going to prioritise and all of the things that the organisation is not going to do.

And the strategy’s purpose is to get you from where you are now to where you need to be. Maybe the data maturity assessment showed analysis as a relative strength but culture as a relative weakness and your corporate plan says "In 3 years time all of our decisions will be data-driven". A reasonable strategic choice might be to invest in improving the culture around decision making rather than getting more and better analysis.

It's well worth spending time getting as many people as possible across the organisation on board with these strategic choices, because saying no to a pet project in 6 months time is much easier if everyone agreed that you wouldn't invest in that area. And, hopefully, everyone else is focused on the corporate strategy – so once they understand how this is going to get everyone where they need to be, they'll become enthusiastic supporters.

5. Don't over-plan

One of the reasons a data strategy is important is because data affects every single part of the organisation. And it's not just about databases and graphs, it's about the conversations people have with service users, with their colleagues and with their managers.

This also means it can be very difficult (and in larger organisations sometimes impossible) to predict with confidence the impact of changes made around data on every aspect of the organisation. You need a direction and you need to make changes but you also need to be alive to operating in a complex environment.

As people start behaving differently around data new, unforeseen, barriers and opportunities will open up. This is a good thing and a data strategy should anticipate it and encourage it.

My experience is that the single largest benefit of developing a data strategy is stimulating better conversations around data. These conversations really drive the improvement.

We typically include a roadmap with our strategies. In our framing a roadmap shows the steps that seem to make sense, right now. The first couple of steps you can have a lot of confidence in, the further down the road the less confidence you will have. The roadmap should be regularly reviewed so that as the organisation progresses it is always taking the most appropriate next step.

In summary

A data strategy is useful, so long as the organisation is clear about what it is trying to achieve. But change in organisations, especially around something as pervasive as data, arises from the multiple conversations between people across the organisation. A data strategy can help those conversations but it cannot replace them.

What next?

 
All, Tips and toolsBen Proctor