How to Run More Accurate and Insightful Reports for Your Nonprofit
Reporting is a critical part of any nonprofit’s operations. It helps you monitor key performance metrics for an accurate overview of your nonprofit’s health. It gives you detailed information about functions and campaigns in your organization so that you can see how well they’re tracking against goals and can change direction when needed. It also helps you spot trends so that you can identify opportunities for improvement across the organization.
So, doesn’t it make sense to make the most of your nonprofit’s reports?
Here are five practical ways to run more accurate and insightful reports for your nonprofit.
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Understand your reporting capabilities.
Many software solutions, such as constituent relationship management (CRM) systems, donor management software, peer-to-peer fundraising software, and online fundraising platforms, offer dashboards for quick, daily overviews of your nonprofit’s health. You’ll also typically find some type of detailed reporting functionality in your software, which can help you dive deeper into specific functions and/or campaigns across your organization.
Many software solutions also take reporting further with more sophisticated dashboards and reports as well as data visualization, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence tools that provide insights into donor and constituent demographics and trends, marketing and fundraising trends, KPIs, and overall organizational health. These types of tools can help you make better data-driven decisions about fundraising, marketing, volunteering, and more.
If you haven’t learned how to use your reporting tools or if you need a refresher, then take advantage of training available from your software vendor or ask one of your vendor’s service providers to provide you with training.
TIP: Cathexis Partners can help you understand the reporting functionality available in your software and how to use it more effectively.
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Incorporate reporting into your daily work.
Some software solutions offer tools that help you use reports to make more informed decisions on a regular basis. For example, with report scheduling tools, you could schedule reports to be run and sent to you or a specific group of people in your organization. For instance, a report of recent large gifts might be sent weekly to remind development staff to call recent high-level donors to thank them directly. A weekly report of new event registrations could help your event manager to adjust logistics for the next big event.
Another of this type of reporting capability involves workflows. These might be built-in templates or customizable workflows. They include things like notifications being sent to certain staff when a specific action has been taken. For example, if a company commits to sponsoring your event via an online form, you can set up your system to trigger an email to you that reminds you to follow up with that sponsor directly with a thank you.
Look for these types of capabilities in your software to help make your nonprofit a more data-driven organization.
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Refine your reports.
It might be easier to use reports just as they come in your software – and sometimes that might be all you need. But, in general, your reports will give you greater insights if you remove less relevant fields and add fields that are unique to your nonprofit’s goals, programs, functions, and campaigns. So, if your software offers report customization capabilities, then take time to tailor key reports.
For example, be sure that your reports are customized for the end user. For instance, you might tailor a transaction report for a person in your accounting/finance department based on the job they need to do with that data, removing irrelevant data columns and arranging others in a useful order.
TIP: The Cathexis Partners team can help you customize your reports so that they are optimized for your nonprofit’s needs.
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Consider what your reports are telling you.
Sometimes a single report can’t tell you the full story you need because the report is limited by the way the data is stored in your software’s data tables. In this case, it’s helpful to think about what answers you’re looking for, and what is the best way to get those answers.
For example, say you’re running a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. To see the full picture of your campaign’s performance, you might need to run two reports: one that shows people and their roles and another that lists monetary transactions within the campaign. A registration report will list the individuals or teams that are part of your event, which you need for headcount and event check-in. A transaction report will list the donations and fees paid as part of the event – important for telling the story of who gave what and which gifts were credited to which teams or fundraisers.
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Ask for expert help.
Your reporting needs might be complex. Or maybe you don’t have time for the in-depth training you need to fully use your reporting capabilities. Perhaps you need an extra set of hands to set up reports the way you need them. If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, then ask your software vendor or one of your vendor’s service providers to help you set up and customize key dashboards, reports, and advanced analytics for your organization. The benefits of accurate and optimized reports are too great to let them slip to the bottom of your list.
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by Andrea Fleisher, Account Manager, Cathexis Partners
With a combined background of technology and nonprofit experience, Andrea works alongside clients to successfully put their online events and fundraising campaigns into action.
