How often do you find yourself wishing you could pull up comprehensive data points about your programmes and their impact over time? Could you imagine this exercise as being efficient and effortless? How much easier would it make scale, programme design, or even reporting? What about all the time and money you would save?
Rubina Nafees Fatima found herself asking the same questions repeatedly. And then she decided something had to be done about it.
Data is an integral resource for nonprofits, yet many struggle to inculcate robust data management practices. To better understand the potential that effective and efficient data management offers, the factors that enable it, and the challenges to adopting these practices, we spoke with a nonprofit that has spent the last four to five years building its data practices.
SAFA is an organisation working on education, skill training, livelihoods, and access to entitlements for women and youth in Hyderabad’s informal settlements. Since its inception in 2006, the organisation has significantly overhauled its data management system. Rubina, the organisation’s founder and director, stresses that this was the result of a long and arduous journey.
The organisation had long been aware of its need for a robust management information system (MIS). In 2017, it approached companies that specialise in developing such software for nonprofits. However, SAFA couldn’t afford the quoted costs. The organisation subsequently attempted to bring technical staff on board to achieve its data management goals, but this strategy didn’t work as the quantum of work was too large to be handled by a single resource.
By 2020, SAFA was engaged in multiple projects, but none of the data they had collected had been consolidated within the same system. “The burden of having to collate all this data would fall upon our programme managers, especially during midterm reviews. There was so much data, and everything was in a different format. Nothing felt in sync,” says Rubina.
When working with larger partners, the organisation would feel a distinct gap in tech capacities. Elaborating on this, Rubina says, “Many partners required us to use their MIS for projects that we worked on together, and the ease of working on such systems stayed with me. When I met with other CEOs and saw the complete overviews and well-designed dashboards they were operating with, I aspired to being able to utilise similar resources. In fact, I even asked them if we could continue to use their MIS. But this request either had to go through bureaucratic structures or the product was found to be unsuitable due to server compatibility issues.”
How often do you find yourself wishing you could pull up comprehensive data points about your programmes and their impact over time? Could you imagine this exercise as being efficient and effortless? How much easier would it make scale, programme design, or even reporting? What about all the time and money you would save?
Rubina Nafees Fatima found herself asking the same questions repeatedly. And then she decided something had to be done about it.
Data is an integral resource for nonprofits, yet many struggle to inculcate robust data management practices. To better understand the potential that effective and efficient data management offers, the factors that enable it, and the challenges to adopting these practices, we spoke with a nonprofit that has spent the last four to five years building its data practices.
SAFA is an organisation working on education, skill training, livelihoods, and access to entitlements for women and youth in Hyderabad’s informal settlements. Since its inception in 2006, the organisation has significantly overhauled its data management system. Rubina, the organisation’s founder and director, stresses that this was the result of a long and arduous journey.
The organisation had long been aware of its need for a robust management information system (MIS). In 2017, it approached companies that specialise in developing such software for nonprofits. However, SAFA couldn’t afford the quoted costs. The organisation subsequently attempted to bring technical staff on board to achieve its data management goals, but this strategy didn’t work as the quantum of work was too large to be handled by a single resource.
By 2020, SAFA was engaged in multiple projects, but none of the data they had collected had been consolidated within the same system. “The burden of having to collate all this data would fall upon our programme managers, especially during midterm reviews. There was so much data, and everything was in a different format. Nothing felt in sync,” says Rubina.
When working with larger partners, the organisation would feel a distinct gap in tech capacities. Elaborating on this, Rubina says, “Many partners required us to use their MIS for projects that we worked on together, and the ease of working on such systems stayed with me. When I met with other CEOs and saw the complete overviews and well-designed dashboards they were operating with, I aspired to being able to utilise similar resources. In fact, I even asked them if we could continue to use their MIS. But this request either had to go through bureaucratic structures or the product was found to be unsuitable due to server compatibility issues.”