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By Kathleen Kurre, CEO, TechBridge
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
--Lewis Carroll - English Logician, Mathematician, Photographer and Writer, Alice in Wonderland
The nonprofit sector is buzzing with data and outcomes conversations. These are important and prudent as our communities ask for every dollar to go further and every action to have greater impact.
For the past 18 months, TechBridge has been on a quest to eliminate paper within nonprofits by automating client and form processes. As a result, we have found ourselves in the thick of the data, technology, and operational process ecosystem.
In every nonprofit, we saw the same thing. Paper and more paper. Excel spreadsheets and more excel spreadsheets. Mounds of forms. Vast arrays of programs and funders. Plethoras of data reporting requirements. Taken on their own merits, each piece of paper, spreadsheet, form, and reporting requirement had its purpose.
Taken as a whole, it was overwhelming.
This experience was reminiscent of my high school freshman biology class when we studied the textbook view of a river ecosystem and then spent the next month of classes at the river itself, seeing how the plants, fish, insects actually lived together. I saw a similar framework. Data and outcomes are components of a larger ecosystem of people, processes, and technology.
So, we asked two questions:
- First, how do we connect the knowledge of what we know is possible with what we find within the nonprofit organizations?
- Second, how do we understand the nonprofits' impact by talking about its parts, when the parts are so interrelated?
With Lewis Carroll's quote beckoning, our goal for today is to be curious investigators and reporters.
Background
Our insights are based on experience with three specific nonprofits. All are in the human services sector. One nonprofit trains disabled individuals and places them in jobs. Another is an emergency assistance center in central Atlanta. The third nonprofit is a hospice home and has a child care center for special needs children. Prior to the project, two of the three nonprofits had paper-based systems – not because they loved what they had, but because they looked at alternatives and found them all out of their price range. The third nonprofit had a system: an old DOS based system, supported and used by one person on the staff.
In each organization, we completed a project that changed the way the nonprofits did their work through the implementation of client tracking capability, using Salesforce.com for the database and Sharepoint for forms management. Each project had similar characteristics in terms of its activities and each was completed within 4-6 months.
Insights
# 1 - First Things First
Whatever we thought our goal was when we began talking to nonprofits about their needs quickly morphed into the clear directive that the first order of action was to solve the foundational issues of paper, manual processes, and information kept in excel spreadsheets.
As we dove into the requirements definition phase, we exposed the latent demand and a long list of desired functionality, and yet, we also knew that the 80/20 rule worked: if we concentrated on the first, foundational 20%, we would create an 80% impact. Based on our technology experience, we also knew that once technology was in, the nonprofit teams would become comfortable with it, experience its power to change their work, and naturally move into the next steps. This launched our initiative to develop a highly functional and expandable client tracking and forms management capability.
The results have been significant. For example:
- We reduced the time for client intake by 70%. In real terms, the three hours it took to collect data on 35 forms went to less than an hour – effectively saving 2 full-time equivalent employees.
- The time saved in client processing was transferred to working with the clients, helping them solve issues with transportation, housing, childcare, pre-requisites for their future success. And, at the same time, they increased the number of clients they served by 15%.
- The nonprofits saved significant amounts of time (30 – 40 hours per month) creating reports and in looking for files and information.
Our outcomes research friends would say that these results are not yet outcomes. Yes, and yet, this is the first step. Nonprofit effectiveness is important, and critical. Also, functional data was created as an output from the first step to position the nonprofits to begin using the data as input in the discussion of outcomes.
#2 – Good Data Happens When the Underlying System is Working, Easy to Use, and Used.
This might sound like a "no-brainer". It's amazing, however, the number of different systems, technologies, and data collection processes in place within nonprofit organizations. We found two recurring themes:
- Program and/or funder requirements
One organization had 20+ programs and 15 different funders across the programs, each with specific requirements related to forms, data, and processes. The complexity was compounded by the fact that each client had a unique path through the programs, based on their needs and circumstances. As a result, exception processing was the norm. The number of programs, funders, and requirements was consistent across all three nonprofits.
- Ad-hoc systems
Nonprofit technology and operational processes are a function of what works and what's available, easily.
- Just keep it working: One nonprofit had a DOS-based, blue-screen client reporting system, another went to six different systems to get data required for one report.
- Find a way to make it work: Another nonprofit had 2 different client-input/tracking databases, created by 2 different people (one a volunteer), in technologies known by the developers, and which solved one, specific need identified by the nonprofit.
Our conclusion was that it is important to unravel the old by being clear about the problem we needed to solve, and taking people and process into account. The table below summarizes where our time was spent on the three projects and illustrates that 87% of the project focused on people, process, and data. The result, in all three instances, was that on the 1st day the new systems and processes were operational, everyone bought in, no holdouts, no exceptions. Real data was being collected.
#3 – Evolving Learning
Nonprofits, like their commercial counterparts, evolve through a learning curve as they fundamentally change their work through technology and data. Our projects provided insights into the dynamics of the nonprofit learning curve.
- Basic requirement of counting correctly.
When nonprofits talk about data and reporting, they describe how they count clients, program activities, and hours and record demographic data which will later be summarized and counted. The good news is that as this data becomes easier to obtain, it will open time and resources to think about and capture more descriptive data.
- Reactive reporting.
Nonprofit data-related activities are focused on funder and program reporting requirements with each report mandating a specific data set. The opportunity is that as this process becomes less time consuming, the nonprofit teams will be able to look at the data and change the question from "what do I need to report" to "what is the data actually telling us about our clients, programs, and outcomes".
- Data and information sharing.
In Atlanta, there are clusters of organizations in areas of high need which provide a range of services. There is a tremendous opportunity to use the new virtual, mobile enabled platforms to share information and best practices.
- Ah-Ha Moments.
In our implementations, we consciously walk the line between the organization's capability today and what we see as possible. Then, we watch miracles happen. In one implementation, we suggested the nonprofit change a process to be more efficient. The nonprofit insisted, for many reasons, that the technologies mirror the existing, paper-based process. We said fine. Within the first week of the nonprofit using the new system, they came back to the TechBridge team and requested an enhancement – to change the process to what we originally suggested. The miracle was that the nonprofit naturally solved the problem themselves and immediately adapted to the change.
Summary
Based on our conversations with nonprofits, foundations, outcomes researchers, and other sector leaders, we believe that this body of work, even in its early stages, is insightful in understanding the foundational elements of technology, change, and impact within the nonprofit sector. Just like laying the foundation for a new home, we believe that the tipping point for the technology, data, and outcomes ecosystem is within reach of every nonprofit. We are excited to be participating and contributing.
Kathleen has over thirty years experience in bringing technology to business in the corporate sector and as an entrepreneur executive. Having worked in the financial services industry (PNC Bank, KPMG consulting and Aegon) and in the healthcare industry (Humana, Inc., Healthcare Recoveries, and Intellego Corporation), she has a broad range of experience in developing and implementing new technologies and leading interdisciplinary teams.
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