In our last post, we highlighted the Top 7 Reasons Your Database is Not Working for You. Over the next three posts, we’ll address each of three keys to database success, and – spoiler alert – none of them are the software itself!
We find that when organizations’ databases are not meeting their needs, the issue is often related to one or more of the following – plans, processes, or people. With these three posts, we’ll unpack these keys to success, one at a time.
Planning for Success
Databases are, at a minimum, containers for data that describe your work. Additionally, more sophisticated systems can also serve as key infrastructure to guide or even automate your work by supporting or driving workflows. No matter where your database falls on that spectrum, it can only document or support your work if that work is intentionally and thoughtfully planned and designed.
We believe three plans are essential to database success:
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- Program Design
- Evaluation Plan
- Data Strategy
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Databases Don’t Like Moving Targets
For years, I’ve said, “You cannot measure what you have not defined. You should not measure what you have not (intentionally) designed.” In our experience, the single largest contributor to database problems in nonprofits are program problems. If a program lacks a cohesive, intentional design and/or is not implemented consistently across time and staff, it is nearly impossible to design a database to store data to accurately, meaningfully, and completely describe that program’s work and results.
Tip: First, create a detailed, accurate Logic Model that describes your program’s Inputs, Activities, Outputs and Outcomes. Then, ensure that what’s on the page aligns with day-to-day realities. Finally, confirm that team members have a shared understanding of the program’s design. If there’s any confusion or disagreement about what your program does, for whom, how often, and why, you will struggle to design, use, and maintain a database that captures meaningful and useful data.
Databases Don’t Answer Questions, Data Do
A detailed evaluation plan that’s aligned with your program design is the map that your database needs (to be designed) to follow. Databases can only answer your most important questions – how is our target population changing over time? Which clients experience the greatest benefit from our program? Which aspects of our clients’ lives are changing the most? How efficiently are we achieving impact? – if you consistently feed them accurate, meaningful, aligned, and timely information.
Tip: Identify which questions you want to be able to answer with your data and which data will help you answer those questions with the right level of accuracy and clarity. Be crystal clear about what outcomes you’re measuring, what indicators represent outcome achievement or progress, how often progress is or should be assessed, and what a meaningful amount of change looks like. Then, document all that in a clear and detailed evaluation plan, and use that as a blueprint to build your system.
Databases are Only a Part of a Data Strategy
A data strategy is a comprehensive plan guiding how an organization collects, manages, governs, analyzes and uses data to achieve its goals. It is a roadmap for how an organization turns data into insights and insights into impact by guiding learning, improvement, decision-making, and planning.
For your database to truly come to life and deliver all its potential value, you must have a plan for how you’ll use the system, including:
- What goes in and what comes out,
- Who uses and manages it,
- How you’ll organize and clean it,
- How you’ll maintain it, and
- Most importantly, how you’ll use what’s in it!
A data strategy is what turns a database from a container into a tool, from an accessory into an asset.
The Bottom Line
A database is not magic. It’s not a silver bullet that will solve your problems. A failing and frustrating database is often just a symptom of a deeper problem – a lack of clarity about what you do, why you do it, and what you want to learn about it. Creating that clarity, documenting those plans, and building a system that aligns is essential to database success.
In our next posts, we’ll explore two other critical success factors – processes and people.