RISING TO THE CHALLENGE: TURNING DATA INTO INSIGHT TO TELL YOUR DIGITAL STORY

We’re all too familiar with the challenges of a post-pandemic environment. However, there are ways to turn challenges into opportunities by transforming disparate data into information and insight.

Challenges we’re seeing with our clients include:

• Scarce resources after the impact of the pandemic and infation

• Variable investment returns

• Reshaping organisations to the new working / public landscape, including adapting culture and practices to a hybrid environment

• Transparency and demands on how organisations are run, with a spotlight on diversity, equity and inclusion

• Conficting demands on grants

• Access to skilled experienced data analysts and meaningful datasets.

Many organisations are adept at analysing their activity with the data they hold, but most have yet to take the opportunity to develop their data, combining it with multiple external sources to create meaningful information and insight.

Two of the key seven accepted priorities for digital transformation are:

• Unlocking your own and external data

• Maximising evolving technology.

For grant-makers, focusing on these priorities has never been more essential.

Unlocking data

Your own – You have a wealth of data ready at your fngertips, such as grantee information, fnance data and more, but do you truly know what you have available, and more importantly, how to bring it together?

External sources – There’s an abundance of accessible, free data sources to help get a rounded insight into your impact and bring your activity to life – from the libraries of the Offce of National Statistics, to 360Giving, to the British Red Cross.

Maximising evolving technology

Before, you needed to invest in, frankly expensive, proprietary products even to get a map of your activity. With the evolution of Excel (and Power Query) and Power BI, creating meaningful historic insights and developing trend-driven future direction is now possible.

Bravery

Independence is a valuable commodity for the grant-making community – the bravery to invest in areas where others fear to tread is an enviable situation.

But with bravery comes public relations challenges, and transparency with your own and benchmarking data provides a viable response to any criticism of how and where you’re funding.

Insights are only valuable if you collect the right information from your constituents. Many organisations are reviewing their application processes to ensure that they collect the appropriate data up. For example, there has been some great collaboration on standards and taxonomy that helps shape the information collected, analysis and comparison of data. See funderscollaborativehub.org. uk/collaborations/dei-data-standard