The nonprofit sector is a new space for me. I knew that I needed to cover all of my bases when it comes to research. I volunteer for a nonprofit, so I knew that was a good starting point to ask people how they manage their data and understand their overall operations. I spoke with four representatives from different nonprofits (including one from charity: water) to help me understand the space, how they operate, and what tools they use to track their donations and volunteers.

SME Interviews

In order to understand how nonprofits operate, I needed to ask the right people how this specific industry works and what data management tools are used.

Here are some key insights from the SME interviews:

• Success is dependent on being fully transparent with where money is dedicated (administrative costs and the actual charity donations) with publicly available documentation to prove it.
• Success is also dependent on the visual appeal and branding of the charity. There are hundreds of charitable organizations, creating a minimalistic brand identity that is also recognizable helps you stand out among donors of all ages.
• Success is dependent on having a clear mission and vision. It also needs to be sustainable (overhead money to take care of administrative costs and money to fund actual programs).
• A beautiful and simple way to navigate through a website to donate also plays a large success in a charity's longevity while keeping it consistent with the brand's identity.
• Being transparent with your business model from the get-go is imperative. For example, the 100% business model (a business model where 100% of donations go to the cause) has its downfalls (private donors covering the administrative cause can potentially sway where a charity puts money in their projects), but if a charitable organization is transparent with their business while mastering the art of visual rhetoric such as minimal design, feel-good stories, brand identity, "standout" branding, displaying abstract ways of a design into real life (for example, charity: water's brand is a yellow water jug, but they display this in real life photos) then you are almost guaranteed to continue to be a successful organization.
• Subscription-based services have been on the rise, and charitable organizations have implemented this so they can let donors feel like they are constantly feeling like they are part of the feel-good story.
• Culture and integrity. To keep a charitable organization honest and healthy, the administrative side that drives the organization is also imperative. The staff needs to stay healthy within for long-term success and help drive the vision of the organization. When you have a group of noble and passionate staff, you make it difficult for other charitable organizations to compete with you for donor dollars.
• Data management and tracking are dependent on the charitable organization. A majority of the organizations (from who I have spoken with) use spreadsheet-like software (like google sheets and excel) that do not provide a dashboard feature and CRM tools (like Salesforce and Datadog) that do provide a dashboard feature, but an application is needed to be installed instead of being fully web-based (while having a level of upkeep).

Competitive Analyses

Since a majority of nonprofits use spreadsheet-like software (no dashboard available) to track internal information, business intelligence dashboards (requiring an application to be installed), and CRM tools (also requiring an actual application to be installed with heavier setup) I went ahead and compared a few of these products.

Data Management Tools

Feature Analyses

My competitive analyses findings include:

• None of the spreadsheet products can transform data into dynamic actionable insights.