3 Common Nonprofit Data Challenges and How to Deal with Them
Nonprofits face challenges when it comes to collecting and reporting data on their programs and services.
Here are three common, often intertwined, data challenges that nonprofits face and suggestions to help you overcome them.
Nonprofit Data Challenge 1 - Limited Resources
Most nonprofits are small and resources are limited.
“...92 percent [of nonprofits] operate with less than $1 million a year, and 88 percent spend less than $500,000 annually for their work.” (Nonprofit Impact Matters )
How are you supposed to invest in specialized data staff, data management software, or powerful reporting tools when you don't struggle to offer a 3% match on a 401K?
When your nonprofit's budget is small, every dollar you spend has to count.
On top of the general lack of funds, nonprofits face unrealistic expectations from individual donors and foundations. Nonprofits are expected to turn 5 dollars into summer meals for 250 students, housing for 50 families, and to use whatever is left over to pay for their staff and facilities.
If you don’t, someone bellows “overhead blah blah” ... “you’re a NONprofit so...”.
*** deep calming breaths ***
And we didn't even start on grant restrictions.
*** more deep calming breaths ***
The solution is easy. Raise a bunch more unrestricted money... Just kidding.
So what can nonprofits do that’s free or nearly free?
1. Look for skilled volunteers. There are plenty of people who want to do more than serve food or organize the clothing closet. Sites like
2. Use grad student interns. I’m not talking about MSWs here. They’re great, but data usually isn’t their top priority. I’m talking about MBAs, MPAs, or social science grad students in programs that emphasize quantitative methods (basically statistics). Sociology, psychology, even marketing if you find the right person could work.
3. Talk with the biggest funder(s) in your community. That might be a united way, a corporate foundation, or a community foundation. Tell them you want help with data and see what they can do for you.
Funders that are focused on your community will want you to succeed and might be willing to invest time or money to help you do that.
Resources constraints will probably never go away. If you don't have any money to spend, you are looking for free help, free expertise, and free software (e.g. the Excel software that you already pay for) to allow you to improve your data processes.
Nonprofit Data Challenge 2 - Limited Data Expertise
Many nonprofits are fortunate to have highly skilled staff who use and embrace data. They are comfortable managing and analyzing data. But, that's often not the case. I have had multiple conversations with incredibly smart nonprofit leaders who say things like “I’m not a numbers person” or “I am not a data person”. f
Perhaps they didn’t have the privilege of taking introductory statistics 3 times (like me!) to get comfortable with data. Or, perhaps they did, but never grew confident in their ability.
Either way, data management and data analysis are skills that take time to develop. And, most nonprofits need at least one person on staff (preferably more) who are pretty good with data to handle reports, to understand their participants, and to find opportunities to improve their services.
Thankfully, your nonprofit probably doesn't need a data scientist or a software engineer to get really good with data. You can learn to track your outputs and outcomes, analyze demographics, and track useful data with a manageable amount of training and practice.
So what can you do to improve data skills at your nonprofit?
1. Make data skills a priority when you hire staff at all levels of your organization. That doesn’t mean you need a bunch of data scientists doing counseling. But it does mean you should have a lot of people who know their way around a basic Excel formula.
And, data skills probably should not be the top priority for lots of your staff, just one of the top handful of skills that you need.
2. Encourage staff to complete a cheap or free online introductory statistics course on work hours. Maybe they can skip a few unnecessary meetings or take on one less client for a few months.
Why a course and not just a bunch of free videos around YouTube. A course has syllabus, well planned content, a beginning, and an end. It probably has practice problems and exercises to complete. A person can celebrate the completion of a course and maybe get a certificate. A YouTube video ends, and the person moves on.
Udemy ($15 - $20 during their regular sales) and Coursera have cheap or free courses that your staff can take. Some libraries also offer free access to LinkedIn Learning
3. Build “intermediate level” skills in Excel or Google Sheets. We can all type in data and do the very basics, but you can do a lot more with spreadsheets. Prioritize learning about formulas, pivot tables, lookups, and writing basic functions. You also need to understand how to clean data so you can analyze it.
If you find the right introductory stats course, you’ll learn a lot of this along the way.
4. Create Data Standard Operating Procedures. It's best to have the cleanest, most consistent data possible, even if your organization never develops great skills with data analysis. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) will ensure that your staff enters data when they should and how they should.
For example, what race categories will we use? Can people have just one race or multiple? Do we use "Woman" or "Female" when we track gender? What other gender categories will we use? These types of SOPs make sure that your data is easy to analyze and summarize.
SOPs are critically important when you track your work with spreadsheets, and there are few restrictions on the data your team can submit (or delete!).
Nonprofit Data Challenge 3 - Data Management Software is Expensive and Complex
Challenges 1 and 2 lead us here.
Most nonprofits don't have much money and many nonprofit staff are not confident in their data skills. Software can sometimes compensate for a lack of data expertise...but only if you can afford it and implement it.
The software nonprofits can use to track and report their programs ranges widely - from free (e.g. the spreadsheets you already use) to requiring a second mortgage on your Palm Springs vacation home. Well, it's not exactly that expensive, but $10,000 "setup and onboarding" fees are common.
The amount of skill and time required to set up these systems is also wide-ranging. Some software is self-service and takes a few hours, while other software requires expensive and time consuming set up.
Free software is great, but it's not really "free" if it takes up a lot of your time and the data you get from it isn't great. It costs you time, stress, and maybe you lose out on some grants because pulling the right data out takes too long.
The benefits of paid software can been substantial, including quick reports, higher quality data, organized notes, and more, but, you'll need money to pay for it.
So what can nonprofits do to upgrade their data management software?
1. If you have zero money to spend, hire data-skilled staff, build your statistics skills, and get better with spreadsheets. If you don't have money to upgrade software, you need to make the best with what you have.
You can do a ton with spreadsheets if you are willing to learn new skills. As noted, inexpensive courses will help you maximize spreadsheets for as long as possible.
2. Find affordable software to upgrade past spreadsheets. countbubble was made to be affordable for smaller nonprofits (e.g. no up front fees, no contract lock in, affordable monthly price). There are a handful of other affordable options on the market (e.g. CharityTracker) that are worth a look.
Even with paid software, you might find yourself doing a little work in spreadsheets; but your data will be more organized and higher quality. And, the software will help you run common reports in seconds rather than (potentially) hours.
3. Ask the biggest funder in your community for help. Let them know you want to upgrade your data tracking technology. Find out if they fund technology. And ask if other nonprofits have made the same requests. If data technology challenges become a known issue in your community, you might convince community-focused funders that it's a priority.
Are you a small nonprofits with data challenges? Check out countbubble. Our Standard Plan is affordable for smaller nonprofits, and countbubble's free plan is coming soon for small nonprofits that aren't ready to pay for better program tracking software but are ready to upgrade past spreadsheets.
Founder, CountBubble, LLC
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