The Nonprofit Data Ecosystem: How Does Your Data Flow?
Flickr Photo by HappysmurfdayOver the past couple of years, we've released reports on Donor Management Software, Content Management Systems, and CRMs. As we prepped to conduct the 2009 Constituent Relationship Management Survey and Report, we started to think more deeply about how to define a CRM, how to categorize the increasing number of software systems on the market, and what would be the best way for NTEN to bring an objective, useful report to the nonprofit sector to help you make better-informed software decisions.
After some good conversations with NTEN Members and consultants who have their heads in these systems, we began thinking about the links -- or the missing ones -- between the different systems nonprofits use to track any number of tasks on a daily basis.
The more we talked, the more we saw a relationship to the natural world, and the more the analogy of an ecosystem seemed to encompass what we're all trying to understand: how nonprofits should think about how all of the data they collect can be interconnected and all the factors that play into a healthy environment.
(If you're like our communications manager, you'd compare a healthy environment to Hobbiton, an unhealthy one to Mordor. But that's probably just him.)
The nonprofit ecosystem is a way of thinking about how data is shared by and flows across the different departments and activities in your organization. So, we'd like to take a look how your systems work together (if they do at all) with our first Data Ecosystem Survey. Our hope is that this will be a help to you, as well, giving you a place to start to evaluate the systems your organization uses and how they connect.
To do that, we need your help! When you have a spare 10-15 minutes today, please take the survey.
> I have 15 minutes free right now. Take me to the survey!
Everybody who completes it will get a free copy of the final report.
We encourage any staff within your organization to take part. You will need to know the names of the software that you are using to evaluate it properly. Other than that, you will not need any technical knowledge of the systems to rate software you use in the following areas:
- Managing Donors
- Managing Volunteers
- Managing Activists
- Managing Clients/Program Data
- Manage Appeal / Alert Emails
- Manage Events / Event Registration
- Mangae ECommerce / Donations
- Content Management Systems
> Help us help you learn more about your Nonprofit Data Ecosystem!
