We Are All Data Managers: Learn How To Up Your Game

Transforming Nonprofits

What are the Six Steps to Becoming a Data Management Ninja?

This episode discusses the skills, many of which are non-technical, that any nonprofit staff member can use to improve their role in data management and help their organization tell their stories better.

The Six Steps to Becoming a Data Management Ninja

1. Learn the nonprofit landscape
2. Understand the relationships
3. Learn your technology
4. Become a data quality nerd
5. Become a great communicator
6. Become a super sleuth

In ways both large and small, every person working at a non-profit shares some data management responsibility whether you’re in development, programs, finance, HR, IT, the executive office or any other department, you’ve got to manage data effectively.

Managing data could be entering data and keeping it up to date or running imports, exports or reports but it could also mean just conducting the kind of operations that create the environment for good data management. From building an organization’s culture to hiring the right people, designing and managing a program or a campaign or simply properly executing a process that leads to a good outcome. So, like it or not, we are all data managers and we all have skills that we need to develop to go along with that.

The better the data we have, the better we can tell the story of our nonprofit's mission and work - to donors, board members, the public at large, volunteers, clients, and employees.