To gather data about your programs, you might not even have to leave your office.
Technology can help you meet your constituents where they are and make sense of the information you collect from them. What kinds of tools are available? In this article, we look at a few good options to collect and analyze data in the field.
Nonprofit staffers have a range of technology options to choose from when it comes to tools to help them collect data about their programs. Whether in the field, on site visits, or meeting with remote staff by videoconference, the right technology can save hours of travel and tedious data entry — but with so many options available, how do you know which ones are right for your needs?
You'll need a way to actively collect program data such as survey results or text messages from constituents, or handwritten notes from your staff. From online surveys and qualitative narrative analysis software to text messaging and mobile apps, technology can help you obtain and manage that data in the field.
You'll also need to analyze that data. Depending on your needs, the data you collect may be quantitative, qualitative, or a combination of both. Quantitative data uses numbers to describe a situation — for example, the number of participants, number of events, or number of services you provided — while qualitative data use words and ideas. There are tools to support both methods.
We talked to a number of experts, conducted our own research, and compiled that information into this article. We'll walk through the different tools available to help you collect data, what they can do, and whether they might work for your particular needs. There are several free or very low-cost tools that can help you obtain and manage data. Let's look at the tools one at a time.
Online Survey Options
Need to collect data from a geographically diverse population? An online survey can help you gather information from the people your charity serves. Online survey tools are a cost-effective way to gather both qualitative and quantitative constituent data. They allow you to define survey questions and possible responses using an online interface, send constituents links to take the survey, and download response data.
Industry Leaders
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SurveyMonkey offers a popular online-hosted survey tool that works well for basic surveys. Prices range from the free version for small and informal surveys to the
Standard, Advantage, and Premier versions, which cost hundreds of dollars per year. SurveyMonkey also acquired one of its competitors,
Zoomerang, eliminating that separate tool, but others abound.
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QuestionPro has a basic free version that offers 10 questions and 100 responses. The
TechSoup QuestionPro Donation Program offers a one-year subscription to QuestionPro Corporate for one user for $97 to nonprofits and public libraries. It allows your organization to create unlimited surveys with unlimited questions and to collect unlimited responses. This donation offer is nearly half price ($54) with a
Boost subscription.
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SurveyGizmo offers some basic features for free, with more sophisticated features costing between $300 and $1,800 annually for its Consumer Edition. Plus, it offers even more features through its Enterprise version.
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Polldaddy offers surveys and polls, with more advanced versions costing between $200 and $900 per year.
Other Low-Cost Integrated Solutions
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Constant Contact is an email marketing service that offers a discounted subscription at a cost of $216 for nonprofits that prepay for six months. This is for its Email Plus Plan that includes surveys and polls and covers up to 500 contacts. If you have more than 500 contacts, check out its
pricing calculator.
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Formsite is an online form builder. It provides a limited free account that gives you five forms per month and more advanced packages ranging from $150 to $1,000 per year.
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Moodle is free to download, but it will require substantial technical knowledge to install, configure, customize, and support.
Looking to conduct larger-scale research, marketing, and feedback analysis projects? Here are some more powerful survey packages to consider.
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LimeSurvey is a free, open-source tool. It has a free plan with unlimited surveys, but only 25 responses per month. Its Basic plan is $24 per month for 1,000 responses per month. It also has more expensive
Expert and Enterprise plans.
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Key Survey is one of the most robust of the survey tools, and the most expensive — pricing is only available by request. Call 1-781-325-4843 to get a price quote for your organization.
Mobile Devices
Mobile data collection — gathering data using phones or other mobile devices — can be a useful tool to allow field staff to collect data directly from constituents. Many low-income and homeless populations use mobile devices as their sole means of technology, as do teenagers.
That tendency provides nonprofits with a means of gathering data from these demographics — especially quick information that can be easily entered by constituents. Mobile devices also allow you to collect and analyze data with more speed and accuracy than ever before.
There are many different tools to collect data using mobile phones. Assess each carefully to make sure it meets your needs.
Mobile Texting, Also Known as SMS
Inexpensive solutions for mass texting include
GroupMe,
CallFire,
TextIt, and
FrontlineSMS, all of which have nonprofit clients. TextIt also allows you to create and send relatively complex question flows using a mobile phone. At the top of the market is
Upland Mobile Messaging, which can integrate with your CRM (constituent relationship management) software but can cost upwards of $2,000 per month.
For local campaigns, expect to spend anywhere between $10 and $100 per month. The cost can climb, however, depending on the size of the campaign and the number of recipients. Two-way texting can also increase cost.
Once you've collected your data by text, you can use geographic information systems (GIS) to display, analyze, and share it. For example,
The New York Times created an
interactive map of bird-watching spots in the city by asking birdwatchers to submit favorite spots by text message. Staffers used
Google Fusion Tables to map and report the results.
Mobile devices can also be useful for conducting polls or surveys, whether you're off-site or trying to reach far-flung constituents. The
Echo Mobile app, formerly called mSwali, collects data from clients through SMS surveys and lets you view and analyze results in real time. You can also use text messages to ask constituents to answer survey questions, visit links, or sign petitions.
Other live polling platforms that leverage mobile include
Poll Everywhere. It has a free basic version and multiple plans ranging from $10 per month for 700 responses to $9,999+ for custom support and responses.
Mobile Apps
Want to track attendance and participation at events — for instance, trainings offered by your nonprofit or library? Mobile applications, or "apps," can be a good option due to their availability and portability. Apps are pieces of software that run on mobile devices — unlike websites, they're accessible even when phones are not connected to the Internet. Nonprofits can use them to build mobile data collection surveys, but only users who download the apps can participate.
Nearly all online event applications these days now have mobile apps associated with them.
Capterra hosts a big list of them. The apps are easy to use for both event participants and staffers who need to manage check-ins, schedules, and other administrative functions.
Custom Apps
In some cases, a custom-made mobile app could be useful to help volunteers carry out your nonprofit's work in the field. Very simple apps can be created for a few thousand dollars, but for a fully customized, detailed application, expect to spend at least $10,000 — a number that can climb into the hundreds of thousands for development and testing depending on the complexity of the application.
Consider whether or not the staff time and resources required to build such an app are worth the help it can provide you with data collection. Apps are platform-dependent — those developed for the iPhone won't work on Android phones or Windows phones, and vice versa — so test the waters and identify your audience before making that choice. (In our experience, custom apps are rarely worth the cost.) If your organization needs a custom app, a service called
Attendify makes it relatively easy to create a custom mobile event app in a matter of hours.
Video Conferencing
Mobile phones or tablets with video-enabled devices also provide a means of outreach, enabling field staff to reach home office staff, hold online meetings, or check in between field visits. For example, a private foster-care and adoption agency partnered with AT&T to provide broadband Internet to foster-care families — the speedy connection allows caseworkers to use video conference to conduct informal check-ins with clients.
TechSoup offers access to video conferencing via
Zoom.
Tools to Convert and Analyze Data
Once you've gathered your data, you will need to convert it into an organized, electronic format that can be analyzed or reported. A number of tools can ease this process, especially when you're faced with a mountain of information that needs to be analyzed.
Optical Character Recognition
If you've got lots of paper notes or forms that you've collected on-site and you need to get the information into your case management database, try
optical character recognition (OCR) software. OCR tools allow handwritten or printed text to be scanned using an external scanner; that image is then converted to machine-readable text that can be searched, analyzed, and imported into the system you use.
OCR improves the accuracy of data collected and reduces the time it takes staff to enter the data. The technology isn't infallible, though — it's best if staff members take the time to check over the scans and correct them if needed. If you're on a tight budget, consider freeware OCR software such as
OCRFeeder,
Tesseract-GUI, or
TextRipper.
Qualitative Narrative Analysis
To better understand and analyze non-numerical data, like oral histories, social media data, or focus group notes, you may want software to help.
Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (or CAQDAS) discerns patterns or trends from pages of text. Also known as qualitative narrative analysis software, it automates the coding process through a user-defined "story grammar" that assigns categories and values to narrative content.
This software can be expensive and could be of limited use if you only need to analyze a few interviews. Open-source CAQDAS tools include
Coding Analysis Toolkit, a free and user-friendly option, and
Qiqqa, which helps manage and analyze information stored in PDF documents. Qiqqa also includes a built-in OCR process.
If the information you're trying to analyze is in the form of digital audio or video that hasn't yet been transcribed,
Transana might be useful — the developers charge a flat fee of $150 per computer for the
Basic service.
Microsoft Excel
To analyze survey data, consider using a spreadsheet software program like
Microsoft Excel to take notes from audio and video recordings. Excel has many advantages, including accessibility, cost, and graphical presentation.
Alternatively, you could use OCR software to extract text from written narratives; enter information into a spreadsheet; and code and categorize for thoughts, keywords, and phrases. This process can be helpful when you have a number of narratives to analyze and limited resources to do so.
Choosing the Right Technology
When considering tools to help your nonprofit or library collect and analyze data in the field, start with a strategy to identify and define your goals about the types of data you want to collect. What will be most helpful to gather information about your programs? It's also important to take into account your budget — not just for purchasing tools, but for additional costs, including training staff on new technology.
The right technology can make a big difference in your ability to better understand the results of your programs. It won't do the work for you. But it can make it easier to collect relevant data in the most convenient, efficient ways to communicate with constituents and evaluate the programs that serve them. As the world becomes increasingly data driven, it's more important than ever to equip your nonprofit with the tools and ability it needs to thrive.
Additional Resources: Collecting and Analyzing Field Data for Nonprofits
This article was written by Idealware, which provides candid information to help nonprofits choose effective software, and updated by Jim Lynch in the fall of 2018. For more articles and reviews, go to
www.idealware.org.
