Driving Social Change With Data

The experience showed Dayton the power of easy-to-use, scalable software to turn raw information into something that could make a difference in the real world. For one, nonprofits need to collect performance data not only to measure the impact of a particular project, but also to drive continuous improvement within the organization itself. Jarrod Bell, CTO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, who spoke on a recent SS/R-Salesforce panel, said that such data can provide "not just a report of what's happened, but also [the opportunity] to experiment around innovation, and actually tweak our programs based on the kind of feedback we see in the system." Another 47 percent said that capturing and managing accurate data on constituents is a challenging, complex undertaking that the report described as requiring new and deeper levels of data, goal setting, automated processes, and the rigorous tracking of results.