From Overwhelm to Insight: How Non-Profits Can Use Data to Drive Decisions

*By: Sierra Sullivan, KHS Consulting Content Manager*

In this month’s blog, we’re excited to feature one of our talented Content Managers, Sierra Sullivan, as she shares her journey from healthcare data analysis to helping nonprofits leverage data for strategic decisions. She brings a unique perspective to KHS Consulting, using her Masters in Public Health and expertise in Excel, trend analysis, and data visualization to transform complex data into actionable insights. In this post, you’ll find some valuable tips on how using data can help you make informed decisions, measure success, and ultimately, drive your missions forward. Stay tuned for more posts that highlight the unique skills and insights our team members bring to our clients!

When I joined KHS Consulting as a Content Manager, it was hard to imagine how my experience analyzing and visualizing trends in healthcare data as a Population Health Strategist would translate to the nonprofit sector. However, it turns out the time I spent learning Excel formulas, mining spreadsheets, creating reports, identifying trends, and translating data into meaningful and actionable information is completely relevant to the work that I do today.

What comes to mind when you hear the terms data analysis and data visualization? Maybe you are like me; the challenge of figuring out what to do with a spreadsheet full of numbers excites you. Perhaps it's a little intimidating or you think of complicated tools and cumbersome reports. Maybe you think about the amount of time it will take. Historically, you’ve spent hours pouring over spreadsheets until everything blurred together and you secretly don’t wish to do it again. I get it. Data analysis and visualization can be overwhelming! Yet, both are important for helping nonprofits tell a compelling story.

Put simply, data analysis is the process of turning raw data into insights that help guide decision making. Visualization is creating charts or graphs to help you see those insights quickly and clearly.

Data Analysis and Visualization in Action

At KHS Consulting, we use data in a variety of ways. It helps us measure success of campaigns, adequately allocate resources, gather input and feedback from key stakeholders and evaluate program success.

Case 1:

After a shift in leadership, one of our clients experienced a significant decline in donors and donor revenue. Our team analyzed years of donor data to understand previous donor giving levels in order to put this client on a path toward reengaging donors and recovering annual revenue levels. Our team used historical data to develop a tailored marketing and communication strategy for 2024. This strategy included a new donor welcome kit, a campaign to capture lapsed donors and first time use of the science of a giving ladder to create compelling giving levels. As a result, our client saw a 144% increase in the total number of donors, a 19% increase in total donor revenue, and a recapture of 16% of donors from 2023.

Case 2:

In our strategic plan process, KHS creates and deploys key stakeholder surveys to gather information to help inform the final plan. When working with a youth serving organization we asked survey respondents about their familiarity and understanding of the mission, programs, and impact in the community. By visualizing the responses to these questions in bar charts, we were easily able to identify that stakeholders understood the organization’s impact in the community and were aware of programs offered, but there was some disconnect between these things and the community’s understanding of the mission.

These visualizations quickly provided the strategic planning committee with the insight needed to update the organization’s mission–making it simple, memorable and a better reflection of the organization’s overall impact.

We also asked stakeholders an open-ended question to capture how they would describe the organization to a friend. It can be daunting to think about analyzing over a hundred responses to find common words or themes, but with a word cloud you can quickly identify what is most important. The most common words are displayed in the cloud and the larger the word, the more frequently it is used. This visual is quick and easy to create within Survey Monkey, the online survey platform of choice for KHS Consulting.

From this word cloud, it was easy to see that stakeholders view the organization as kid friendly, safe, program focused, and great for youth and families, all of which align with the ultimate mission and vision.

In conclusion, don’t let your data overwhelm you, let it empower you and your decision making. It’s one of the best tools available to help you celebrate wins, see opportunity and turn your mission into impact.

Here are some quick tips to help you move from overwhelm to insight:

Start small and focus on one key metric.
Plan your data collection with purpose, thinking of all the data elements you will need to tell your story. Check out the following Donor Data List, also found on our Resource Page, as a starting point:

Think about the data analytic tools you already have available. What reporting capabilities are available in your CRM? Does someone on your team have a knack for numbers and spreadsheets? How can you use their skills?
Choose the right visual for the data and keep them simple. Bar charts are great for comparing categories of a single measure. Line graphs can help visualize trends over time. Pie charts can help you show proportions.
Use color intuitively and to highlight information. Use reds and oranges to highlight trends or alert to potential issues. Blues and greens can be used to indicate positive trends or opportunities.
Lastly, let your data guide your decision making to tell your story better.