It’s the end of month again, and your staff sigh at the thought of having to put together the monthly reports. Why is reporting so hard for Not for Profits?
Well, in reality, this is not just a problem for Not for Profits. I’ve seen the piles of spreadsheets that staff from government, private sector and Not for Profits use to create reports.
The most efficient ones are Excel masters, creating macros and pivot tables to try to make their jobs a little easier.
But does it have to be this hard?
Why is reporting so hard?
Let’s start with the why.
Reporting is generally hard for Not for Profits because:
- Data is stored in multiple systems that don’t talk to each other.
- Diverse funding sources have different requirements for reporting and can change.
- Organisations may provide a breadth of services that have different KPIs.
- Staff is untrained in using the reporting tools that may be available in their current systems like the CRM.
Requirements for good reporting
While technology can be an enabler of better reporting, it is very important that the data you need is both available and reliable.
Available means that each data piece you want to report on needs to be captured in a system. I often find crucial information is often documented outside of systems in emails and spreadsheets instead.
Available also means it must be reportable. In order to do that, it needs to be captured in a standardised data field (often with options or a drop-down menu). Information captured in a large open text box is not usually searchable – although AI should make this possible in the future.
Reliable means that you can trust the information to be true and accurate. Where there is significant data duplication, this is not possible. So, a clean-up effort is absolutely required on a regular basis.
Furthermore, to match data across multiple systems, there must be something that ties it all together for reporting purposes. It might be the date or a stakeholder’s name and street address. Whatever this matching “key” data is, it generally must be in exactly the same format.
So, an address that might say 123 N. 5th Street in one system could be difficult to match to 123 North Fifth Street in another system (or even with the same system, resulting in a duplicate). This is especially true if a Google Maps validation is not possible.
That’s another reason why regular data cleanup is important.
Ways that technology can help your Not for Profit with reporting challenges
Despite these challenges, all these can be overcome with some investment in technology.
- Use reporting tools: Consider reporting tools like Power BI (often free with your Microsoft 365 license) to consolidate data sources and build standardised reports and dashboards. Training is the investment requirement here.
- Integrated your data sources: typically, your CRM should be the center of truth for most data sources. Integrating these other systems with your CRM can also make the reporting easier.
- Centralise your data: Sometimes integrations are not enough or too hard. If you have a lot of data sources, it may make more since to centralise your data in a 3rd location like a data lake or data warehouse and add an analytical tool on top of it.
Final thoughts:
Not for Profits can be complex organisations that create lots and lots of data for different reasons. This doesn’t mean that reporting has to be a full-time spreadsheet master’s job though.
Just remember that good reporting requires data to be both available and reliable. And technology investments can be an enabler (some cheaper than others).
I regularly help Not for Profits with their IT investment decisions. Let me know if you need some help.
P.S. If you found this article helpful, you might want to read this one too:
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Association President, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today, she helps NFPs with strategic IT decisions, especially around investments.