Sarah Ford | March 12, 2015
Creating Buy-In For A Data Culture at Your NonProfit
By Debbie Sharnak
So you work at NonProfit XYZ and increasingly you hear about other organizations’ success in utilizing Google Analytics to increase impact. Worried about being left behind, you bring it up at your next staff meeting, and you’re surprised! You hear lots of your colleagues agree about how great it would be to have this information.
So, what next? You spend a ton of time crafting a plan for the organization so that you can begin and gather baselines numbers, while also setting up tracking systems. To be effective, you need some more info from your coworkers, but something has changed since that initial meeting. Now that you need info and help from them (aka time out of their busy days), no one is responding! When they realize you aren’t just going to be able to implement this yourself, they see you as a nuisance. First, they stop replying to your emails, and then they begin ducking behind walls to avoid you in the hallway. You soldier on and set up Google Analytics, hoping that the data can start a conversation with everyone, despite the initial reluctance. However, after a few months, you realize no one is tracking their progress or using any of information gleaned from Google Analytics. Instead, the account remains untouched except when you log in. Pretty soon, you stop caring also…it is just too much work and when no one is supporting your efforts.
Sound familiar? Is the fear of this situation preventing you from even approaching the topic in the first place?
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