Data-Driven Nonprofit Success: Build Authority and Boost Impact with Drew Reynolds

Summary

Podcast Summary: Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Episode: Data-Driven Nonprofit Success: Build Authority and Boost Impact with Drew Reynolds
Release Date: January 15, 2025

In this insightful episode of Nonprofit Nation, host Julia Campbell engages in a compelling conversation with Drew Reynolds, the principal consultant at Common Good Data. Drew brings over a decade of experience in helping nonprofits and public sector clients measure their impact, secure federal grants, and scale their initiatives. The discussion delves into the critical role of data in nonprofit success, the synergy between data and storytelling, and actionable strategies for organizations aiming to enhance their effectiveness and authority in the digital age.

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1. Drew Reynolds’ Journey into the Nonprofit Sector

Timestamp: [02:35]

Drew Reynolds shares his transition from academia to the nonprofit sector. Originally a professor at UNC Charlotte’s School of Social Work, Drew founded Common Good Data in 2018 after recognizing the widespread struggle nonprofits face in capturing and reporting program impacts. He highlights the common challenges organizations encounter, such as drowning in spreadsheets and feeling unprepared for board meetings or funder reports.

Quote:
"There are other folks who do similar work that I do, but the purpose behind founding Common Good Data was to help nonprofits assess their programmatic limitations and build a roadmap to confidently report their impact."
— Drew Reynolds [02:35]

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2. The Importance of Thought Leadership and Advocacy in Nonprofits

Timestamp: [05:08]

Drew emphasizes that nonprofits are not just service providers but also advocates for their causes. He recounts his experience on a school board during the pandemic, where he realized the necessity of stepping into an advocacy role to highlight the social and emotional impacts of prolonged remote learning on children.

Quote:
"Nonprofit leaders have to recognize that they are also going to be playing that advocate role, advocating for the clients that they serve."
— Drew Reynolds [06:30]

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3. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Building Internal Trust

Timestamp: [09:13]

Julia and Drew discuss the common issue of imposter syndrome among nonprofit staff, where individuals may hesitate to present themselves as experts. Drew suggests that breaking down silos between program and development teams fosters better communication and mutual understanding, essential for accurate data reporting and storytelling.

Quote:
"When you're a program director, understanding that it's your role to help tell stories, you must be in a role of telling stories all the time because you're the one closest to the clients."
— Drew Reynolds [20:32]

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4. Creating a Data-Driven Culture in Nonprofits

Timestamp: [12:09]

Drew advises nonprofits to cultivate a culture that prioritizes data in decision-making. Instead of immediately seeking new tools, he recommends leveraging existing resources by dedicating time to train teams on current tools and encouraging collaborative data analysis sessions.

Quote:
"Modeling that data is something important, that informs how you decide and make decisions, is about using data to understand and better get to know your organization."
— Drew Reynolds [13:45]

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5. Integrating Data and Storytelling for Effective Reporting

Timestamp: [15:33]

The conversation shifts to the powerful combination of data and storytelling. Drew explains that while data builds transparency and trust, stories humanize the numbers, making the impact more relatable and memorable to stakeholders.

Quote:
"Data is a conversation partner that allows you to establish a sense of transparency and trust... stories are how you bring that data to life."
— Drew Reynolds [16:20]

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6. Practical Tools and Frameworks for Tracking Impact

Timestamp: [20:32]

Drew outlines practical steps for nonprofits to track and communicate their impact effectively. He emphasizes starting with manageable tools like paid survey software and utilizing existing platforms more efficiently before investing in new technologies.

Quote:
"Having one paid survey software and getting really used to using that and getting it into your practice is better than having a complex system with dozens of questions."
— Drew Reynolds [22:15]

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7. Communicating Impact to the Public and Stakeholders

Timestamp: [27:29]

Effective communication of data to various audiences is crucial. Drew suggests nonprofits should identify their strengths in communication channels—be it social media, podcasts, or direct mail—and tailor their data presentation accordingly. He recommends creating digestible annual or impact reports that can be repurposed across different platforms.

Quote:
"Create the report because you're going to need it, but then make everything else that you create digestible for people to understand."
— Drew Reynolds [30:38]

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8. Continuous Learning and Positioning in National Dialogues

Timestamp: [31:49]

As the conversation wraps up, Drew stresses the importance of ongoing education for nonprofit leaders. By immersing themselves in relevant literature and dialogues, leaders can better position their organizations within broader conversations and contribute meaningfully to national discussions.

Quote:
"Constantly immersing yourself in the conversation that's happening in your particular area allows you to position your organization as part of the solution."
— Drew Reynolds [33:10]

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Conclusion and Takeaways

Drew Reynolds provides invaluable insights into building a data-driven nonprofit that effectively combines quantitative metrics with qualitative storytelling. By fostering internal trust, utilizing existing tools efficiently, and continuously educating themselves, nonprofit leaders can enhance their organizations' transparency, credibility, and overall impact. As nonprofits navigate the complexities of the digital age, embracing these strategies will be pivotal in building authority and driving meaningful change.

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Connect with Drew Reynolds:

• Website: www.commongooddata.com
• LinkedIn: Drew Reynolds

Follow Julia Campbell:

• Instagram: @JuliaCampbell77
• Podcast: Nonprofit Nation on Apple Podcasts and other platforms

Transcript

[Julia Campbell]

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[Drew Reynolds]

Hi.

[Julia Campbell]

Hi everyone. This is Nonprofit Nation with your host, Julia Campbell. Today, I'm excited to welcome my guest, Drew Reynolds. Drew is the principal consultant at Common Good data with over 12 years of experience helping nonprofits and public sector clients in prevention, mental health, human services, and education measure their impact. Drew works with organizations to build their capacity for evaluation, win big federal grant proposals, and scale the impact of their work. Drew, welcome to the podcast.

[Drew Reynolds]

Thanks so much for having me, Julia. It's great to be here.

[Julia Campbell]

Yes, and I usually start off asking my guests how they got started in the social sector in nonprofit work.

[Drew Reynolds]

So I started Common Good Data just about six years ago, though I guess I've been involved in the social sector in some capacity for longer than that beforehand. I was actually in academia. I was a professor in the School of Social Work at UNC Charlotte, but my wife got her dream job in Atlanta, so we moved to Atlanta where she works at Emory. And I was looking for different types of work and maybe academic work. But I kind of felt that maybe it wasn't the perfect fit and had some existing projects that were helping and working with nonprofits on different types of data collection or evaluation needs. And that was back in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I realized, hey, I actually really like this, but I don't maybe have to be a professor to keep doing it. So I figured, hey, maybe they could become my first clients and start my own consulting business. So I started that back in 2018. And what I started to see immediately and after creating common good data, was that lots of nonprofits, but also some for profits, also some government agencies, too, they're doing a lot of great work, but they struggle mightily with capturing program impacts with data, doing evaluations, reporting back to funders, all that kind of work. And clients were talking about how they were drowning in excel sheets. They were feeling disorganized. Maybe leaders didn't feel like they had a clear picture of what their programs weren't able to accomplish. You know that feeling. If you're an executive director, you need to go into a board meeting to talk about how many people you served and what your programs have looked like over the past quarter, not always feeling prepared to go into that meeting or sometimes running into trouble, reporting back to the grantors and funders who require that to continue funding. And so I said, there's got to be some kind of solution to this. And there are other folks who do similar work that I do, as I've realized. But that was really the purpose behind finding or founding common good data, to work with, you know, different nonprofit clients and organizations, to assess their programmatic limitations and kind of help them build a roadmap or an impact plan to address those, and hopefully within a year or so, be able to report with confidence on who they serve and the impact that they have.

[Julia Campbell]

I know that's tough for a lot of organizations, especially ones just starting out, but even for ones that are pretty much institutional, you know, institutions that have been around for 60 years. So something. Something else you focus on is thought leadership. And what inspired you to focus on thought leadership, or have it be one of your pillars of service and empowering nonprofits to communicate their effectiveness in this way.

[Drew Reynolds]

We often think of nonprofits, especially those who are doing some type of service work, you know, as I meant, like human services or education or working with children or youth or something like that, that you focus on the work you do for them and maybe through some type of direct means. Right. But I think that we Sometimes forget the important role that nonprofits play in advocacy for our cause area. So the constituents you serve in a nonprofit setting, they don't have a microphone like you as a nonprofit leader probably do. So when you talk about issues in the public sphere, you're raising awareness and attention to a problem that, you know, needs attention. I would say it's even a duty for nonprofit leaders to be playing in this advocate role, because in that position you have as a, as a nonprofit leader, our social world, you know, our public sphere looks to you to be an expert on that. You know, a good story about this, that where I kind of learned this a little bit for the first time. I was serving at a school board during the pandemic of a small charter school. We would meet every Wednesday. I was serving on the academic committee at that time to discuss data on Covid related data. They were looking at how are we going to reopen the school for in person learning. And there was a lot of feelings in those meetings that we would have with some were staff members, some were parents, and some were public health experts to try to figure out how we're going to build this plan. And I realized about halfway through the year that I was like, I feel like somebody should be talking about the need to open quickly because of the challenges that I thought that children were going to be experiencing related to social, emotional, mental health challenges and impact, which of course, we ultimately ended up seeing with the pandemic. And I kind of thought to myself, oh, man, I really wish we had somebody in the room who would be an expert on the social emotional well being of kids who could come and make this advocacy happen in this, you know, to talk about the need to reopen the school for in person learning for students. I took a step back and realized actually that is my job because I do have that background. And I, as a social worker, as an academic, as someone who's worked with youth for a long time. And it sort of realized, oh, shoot, I am the expert in this situation. And I had to sort of embrace that role. And I was a little worried at first. I think many people, when you walk into a room for the first time, you don't want to step on other people's toes. And you don't want to come off as somebody who's arrogant or trying to tell everybody else what to do. But there is also an importance, I think, to stepping into the role that is for you and to make sure that you use that microphone for the purpose that you need to. Now, of course, ultimately we reopened the school and it wasn't just because I said there was lots of people. It was a joint collective decision. But it happened because everybody brought their best expertise to the table to do a good job. And so I think that's what nonprofit leaders have to do, is to recognize that they are also going to be playing that advocate role in whatever space that they're in advocating for the clients that they serve.

[Julia Campbell]

I'm on the school board, so I think that's so. I think that's so great. And I was elected to the school board during the pandemic. I got on the school committee December 2020. So I understand completely what you have been through. And we really did rely on experts. I mean, I'm a marketing consultant. I have expertise in storytelling and social media and marketing and nonprofits. But we relied on those outside experts a lot to come in and tell us what's really going on, what are the real consequences, what's really happening on the ground. And I think what you said makes so much sense because nonprofit staff, they want to do their work. They want to put their head down, close their office door and do their work, or they want to provide the services and the programs. They don't usually like to pat themselves on the back, give themselves accolades, put themselves in the spotlight. I know doing some PR with nonprofits, it's hard to get someone to want to talk to a reporter because it's, it's intimidating. But also it's that imposter syndrome. I feel that a lot of nonprofit executives or non profit staff, they feel that. So how can we really overcome those obstacles that we have and position ourselves as experts in our field?

[Drew Reynolds]

Oh yeah, that's a great question. I was working at a nonprofit for a while called Child Spring International. It's now merged with another organization, but we were providing surgeries for children around the world. And that was a job. I was a person who. My job was to help connect kids and surgeons. So how do I help a kid from one country get to another country for a surgery or something along those lines? And there's a lot of detail in minutia in it. There's a lot of forms that have to be filled out, there's a lot of emails that have to be sent and calls that have to be made. And in a role like that, you can kind of get stuck behind a computer screen. And when I had a staff of a couple of folks who worked with me and a mantra that we started to make for ourselves was, hey, we need to make sure that we're getting outside from behind our computer. And that means getting out into the community, whether that's going to talk to people, to talk about the mission of the organization, whether it's for fundraising or for other purposes, whether it was going out and meeting host families who would host children who came to the United States for surgeries, building relationships with them, asking them about what they're looking for and how they want to volunteer, just making sure that we were building relationships with people that were not mediated by like an email. Right. And I think that when you talk about kind of getting outside of impostor syndrome, the phrase that I would come up with, if I'm staying in my office and I'm staying behind a computer and I'm just doing my day to day, I'm doing my job wrong. And every day I would sort of come into the office with that mentality to make sure that I would force myself and say no. It's a part of my job description to go to an event, to go to an event, to get out of my desk and make sure that I'm from behind my desk and make sure that I'm taking opportunities to build the kind of advocacy and thought leadership of the organization, even as a program director, even though my role wasn't necessarily specifically fundraising, for example. So it's important to always kind of find our ways to get out behind the desk to do that.

[Julia Campbell]

I completely agree and I have told this story on the podcast a few times, so apologies if you've heard it, but when I got my very first director of development job, they placed me in an office, actually not in the main building where anything was going on because they were going to expand. But I was the first person. So I was alone in this building, kind of down the street by myself, and really just expected to raise the $5 million budget by myself with one computer and my cell phone and no other real resources. So I do understand, like we cannot be working in these silos and, you know, it all sort of needs to come together. I think something else that's interesting and something that I wanted to really have you on the podcast to talk about is being data driven and using data, but also combining data and storytelling, which is something that I really like. How can nonprofits really sort of get into being more data minded? And then why the storytelling? Where does storytelling come into that process?

[Drew Reynolds]

So I think a good place to begin is I talk to a lot of folks who have a similar question, like, how can I do this? And usually a first idea that comes to mind is, oh, we need to, we need to build a new survey. We need, we need a new technology tool. We need to basically start thinking about the how of data first. And I like to encourage folks to take a step back and to think a little bit more about how you can create a culture that is focused on using data to inform decisions in your organization, to build a data driven culture. Kind of what that means is, or even what I would say, even as a first place to begin as a nonprofit leader, is to bring your team together. And even if it's just you or you and one person you want to volunteer, you know, or maybe you're a big organization and you have a whole team you could bring, is to get together and at your next meeting, show up prepared with any data that you have about your organization, anything that you have, whether it's great or imperfect or incomplete or whatever, and then just share it with your team and ask them what they see, ask them what patterns they're noticing, what does this data tell us about what we should do this year or about what we should do next year in 2025? And then just listen to your staff react. And I find that in those situations, you're doing so many things. One, you're modeling. That data is something that's important, that informs how you decide and make decisions. It's about using data to understand and better get to know your organization, maybe in a way that you don't fully see or understand right away. And it kind of takes away the mystery of it because you're inviting everybody into the process. It's not just one person who has particular Excel skills on your team that's doing it, but that data is something that is accessible to really everyone in your organization. And so I think that beginning there is actually the most important thing. And then it becomes much easier to start to see the stories and the data come together. You know, when I work with organizations and I'll share with them, hey, you know, this is what our caseloads look like over the past three months. Tell me about that. And then all of a sudden, direct staff will start telling stories about interactions that they've had with direct staff that are so meaningful and so poignant and so mission driven that, that the leaders of the organization didn't even know about, because they just haven't had a chance to be with the direct staff in that way before. And so people bring their own interpretation and their own stories to the data. And so all you have to do as a leader is to Create spaces where those two things can be in the same space.

[Julia Campbell]

That's really fantastic advice because we look so closely at what we do. We live it every day. We are in the weeds, in the trenches, performing the work that it's kind of hard to step out of that and see that the data that we collect, there are stories in the data. And as we know, stories tend to make data come to life. If you listen to the news, if you read any story in the news, if it's about an issue that affects millions of people, they're always going to start out with a story to kind of contextualize it and help us remember and help us think. And, you know, stories really have that power to change hearts and minds, whereas data might not. But I do agree that they're so much more powerful together. So how can nonprofits use evaluation and reporting in this way? How can we maybe incorporate data and storytelling into our evaluations and our reporting that we do to outside funders or within our organizations?

[Drew Reynolds]

Yeah, so there's lots of practical answers to that. First, I'll begin with a why to do that. Why is evaluation reporting even so, so important?

[Julia Campbell]

We should start with that. Right. Because there's a lot of organizations that don't do it.

[Drew Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. And I promise I'll give some more practical examples at some point in this podcast. But I think that one of the most important things that data does as an organization, when you. When you communicate the data about your work and who you serve and the evaluation of the programs that you've provided or services that you provided, you're giving information to people and they're interested and they're engaging with it. Maybe they're looking at a cool graph. Maybe they're impressed with the number of people you served in the past year. But what's going on in that conversation between you and whoever that stakeholder is, donor, volunteer, community member, city council member, whatever, is, you're building transparency and you're building trust. Because when you report on your data, you're showing that you know what you're doing and that you know your constituency well and that you are an expert that can be trusted with funds, resources, volunteer time, anything, any sort of resources that are needed to go out and effectively carry out that mission. So the data is a conversation partner that allows you to establish a sense of transparency and trust. Because when you share data about your organization, you're saying, I don't have anything to hide here, and this is what we do, and you can ask any questions about it, and you don't have to be left wondering, are they really doing what they say they're doing? Are they really being as effective as they say they are? You can say, this is what we do. And, and you have that objective set of information that that person then can use to understand who you are as an organization and then build that sense of trust. I also think it's important to know that you can still establish trust and authority, even if your quote, unquote numbers aren't that great. Maybe you thought you were going to serve more people than you were. Maybe something happened, maybe a pandemic happened, maybe something got in the way of you, you know, carrying out your mission. But when you show in the data where that happened, and then you can come back and explain why you think that happened and what you're doing to address it, not only does it show that transparency and trust, that you have the sort of confidence as an organization to know that you can maybe show even some of your weaker spots in the public sphere, but that you also have the type of mentality, a growth mindset as an organization, since that's term often used that says we can build from maybe something that wasn't perfect and turn it into something better next year. Those pieces being open and sort of vulnerable in a sense to being willing to share about yourself and then also talk about how you want to continuously improve, are huge ways you can build transparency and trust. And so, you know, you asked the question, how can we use evaluation and reporting to do this? I think that, you know, practically speaking, it's about building processes as an organization, figuring out kind of like, you know, everybody has a fundraising calendar. What are the key events during the year that you're going to focus your attention on to be able to put on an event and raise some funds. Or maybe you have a social media calendar or communications calendar. You should have something like that around. Data and evaluation that says, this is when all our grant reports are due. This is when we want to complete our annual report that we can share with our board. This is when we want to be able to report back to these specific funders and grantors. And then maybe there's other pieces that you want to add to that. Once you've built that calendar and you have a sense of what you need to be able to develop and show, then you figure out, okay, what is going to be the way in which we're going to have on my team that's going to be able to be responsible for ensuring that those reports come in as we need them to. And so you can kind of work backwards from that larger year long goal.

[Julia Campbell]

Right. You could also have like a thought leadership calendar. Like what are some events where we can really influence advocacy or what are some local events happening or what's going on in our cause and our mission area as a whole? And how can we sort of insert ourselves into these conversations? This is something I talk to my clients about a lot. You know, you are solving your little corner of this problem or you're working on a solution for your little piece of the pie. But this issue has greater consequences and affects more people and is part of a broader context happening around the mission. Say like food insecurity, whatever it might be, violence prevention. So trying to make yourself relevant locally but also really communicate that this issue is larger than all of us and larger than just like our town or our city and how can we work on it together. And you know, I think evaluation reporting. I remember when I was a director of development doing my very first like impact matrix for the United Way. And it was was brutal to really look at the data that we were collecting in that context. So do you have any like tools or frameworks that you recommend for tracking and communicating program impact?

[Drew Reynolds]

Yes. So I would say you're a development director in an organization and you are stuck in that situation where you need to report back to a grantor or you need to and you're kind of like, oh, you got this matrix from the United Way, from a community foundation. One of the challenges that I see happen a lot in nonprofits is sometimes there's this, this imaginary wall. I don't get it. But it's there between people who run programs and people who raise funds. And for some reason it's so hard for those two to talk to one another. I think sometimes on the program side there can be a little mistrust. Maybe they're like, I don't understand the whole money thing or the fundraising thing. It's weird. I just want to give programs. And on the donor side, it's sometimes like, oh man, I feel like there's this whole other world of fundraising that maybe it's not understood. And people kind of come to those meetings sometimes feeling a little sense of mistrust and not understanding what each other. And that's where things break down, where it gets really hard to figure out what are the metrics we're going to use for these grants and how can we work on these together. My approach to that when I work with organizations is to try and build structures in your Organization or processes where programs people and development people are talking to each other a lot more. And that means when you're a program director, understanding that it's your role to help tell stories, even though you think you're developing programs all the time, you must be in a role of telling stories all the time because you're the one that's closest to the clients, where the stories are, where the mission is. Right. And if you're a development person and you're writing a grant, you gotta go talk to your programs people and maybe spend a couple days as a volunteer just walking with your frontline staff and figuring out what it's like to rub shoulders with everybody who's doing the mission out on the street every day. And when you can do that work, the understanding and the trust starts to come together. So anyways, that was the first thing I wanted to share.

[Julia Campbell]

Yes. No. Team building and having that trust internally is so important. You're not going to get the data that you need. Okay.

[Drew Reynolds]

But then also for, you know, the tools, I think for your small and mid sized nonprofits, you're always kind of caught in the situation of like, do I spend the money on survey software or some new type of software that could help things? Is it going to, are we going to have the budget and funds to do it? I think when you're starting out early, it's maybe less about new tools and instead investing in the tools that you currently use and doing them better. What I see in organizations that we actually have, a lot of organizations who have tools that can get the job done, but maybe don't know how to use them, or they're afraid to how to use them, or they don't want to look bad. You know, somebody who says, I look at a spreadsheet and it terrifies me, you know, they might be less willing to use it. So I would say instead of a new tool, just give yourself two or three hours in the first quarter of this year. Better if you can do it monthly for you and your team to dedicate just a little bit of training on using your existing tools. However it is you're collecting data, even if it's just a spreadsheet, how can you use your spreadsheets to design some nice graphics and pivot tables to be able to show your data in a meaningful way? And that's what I would do if I were smaller, midsize. If you're a larger organization, I think a good question you have to start asking yourself is where are the tools that we're currently using getting in the way of our mission. And that can be done through something like an assessment where you talk to your team a little bit about what's working and what's not and then start to uncover, hey, we've got this great practice management system that tracks all of our client data, but we hate to use it. It crashes all the time, and I can't get the reports I need out of it. If you have your team telling you things like that, that's when you need to start thinking about, hey, maybe it's time to do a more comprehensive look at our tools and see if we can find something that might better serve us. But a really practical takeaway for some of those who don't want to do the whole strategic thing. I just love having one paid survey software. Something that's a little bit better than Google Forms. Just one paid survey software. There's plenty of them out there. Surveymongay. Zoho. Survey. There's plenty of them.

[Julia Campbell]

Okay.

[Drew Reynolds]

Just having one and getting really used to using that and getting it into your practice. Anytime you run a training, a workshop, have a volunteer day where you're always getting in the practice of asking people to share their feedback on the work that you do and making data collection and evaluation a regular part of your practice. So the other two things that I shared seem a little bit too daunting. Start with a good survey software.

[Julia Campbell]

Oh, great. And something you said earlier I think is really important because I think when people hear survey or they hear data collection, they think they should be taking all of the data and every little thing and asking every little question. But what you said earlier that really stuck with me was just use, you know, evaluate and acquire the data that you're actually going to use to improve something, to improve your programs, to improve your fundraising, to improve your grant writing, to improve your work. So in my mind, like, do you subscribe to that theory that less is more?

[Drew Reynolds]

Oh, very much so. I was actually having a conversation with a client just the other day and they said, hey, we have this new train, this new thing that we're going to do. Yeah, we wanted to create a survey. So we put some questions together. We had AI help us out, and we designed this questions, which don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan. Use AI. It's great.

[Julia Campbell]

Yeah, sure, but.

[Drew Reynolds]

But in the conversation, we didn't take the initial step back that says, what are we gonna use the data for? And it turned out we were only gonna survey maybe seven or eight people. And if you're only. If it's gonna be that small, you know, whatever. We had an existing satisfaction survey that was gonna get the job done and we didn't need to go through all the work of creating new surveys, sending it back out, figuring out how to report on it. So I give that example just because sometimes you don't need to collect more information. You just gotta use what you have well and build the systems that make it easy so that, you know, you can ask three or four. As a small mid sized nonprofit, you could have one survey that asks three or four questions. And if you administer it everywhere, that actually is going to be way better than having some really complex system with dozens of questions and metrics because you're just going to get drowned in just too much and you won't be able to kind of simplify and focus. I think the organizations that can identify that two or three like core data metrics that they really want to focus on, those are the best ones. And we've been focusing this conversation on more quantitative measures from surveys and numbers and things like that. But man, in this work, and I'm sure that you know this too, Julia story is going to be one of the most important thing. So another good place to begin is to just start getting into a regular practice of doing interviews and focus groups with either your volunteers, maybe it's your board members, maybe it's the constituents you serve, maybe it's somebody else. But getting used to the idea that you can bring people together to ask them about their experience interacting with your organization and making that a regular practice what you do and when you do that, you will learn so much about yourself, about your organization that you can really use to improve your work.

[Julia Campbell]

What are your recommendations for communicating this data evaluation results, things like that? I mean, I'm talking about communicating it to the general public. So social media or email or websites, how, how best to communicate it out.

[Drew Reynolds]

All of them are great. I think that, you know, when it comes to communications, I've learned both as a business owner and as somebody who works with a bunch of businesses which are nonprofits too. Right. Is to pick the handful of things that you're good at and you're comfortable with and do them well. And don't get overwhelmed with trying to be everywhere because you're not going to be able to. So if you have a couple social channels and you do social well, then just do that. Figure out ways to tell great stories on Instagram reels. That sounds awesome. Like that's a great way to Engage your audience. If you're like me and you don't know how to use Instagram, then maybe you find a different venue. I love podcasting and I love blog writing. So those are the things that I like to do. And I have some social presence on LinkedIn and other places. Right. You know, for. I've seen nonprofits do extremely great work through just simply creating beautiful reports and mail, like using direct mail to tell stories about their organization and particularly for their audience. For this organization, it was for typically an older audience. They preferred to receive that information. That way they weren't on social media channels. So it's about knowing who your audience is and what you're good at and kind of finding where that Venn diagram overlaps a little bit. Now, the thing about data is that you're always going to have some type of really long report that you're going to have to send back to a funder, that maybe it's just a bunch of tables and data points. It doesn't look like it's really ready for a public audience. Right. So you're going to have those kind of, you know, report backs and things like that that you're always going to be putting together. But I do recommend that each organization, one time a year, create some type of impact report. It can be included in what's a traditional nonprofit annual report where you report on fundraising and dollars and expenditures and things like that. You can include it in that or have it separate from that, but just once a year, be able to answer the questions, you know, how many people did you reach and serve and other core metrics for your organization? And then that document, you can then split up and carve up into all different types of places to put it on whatever your communication channels are.

[Julia Campbell]

I love that. Yeah. Using visuals. There's so many tools out there to create those visuals. For free canva, you can create an animated GIF or an infographic. You can turn all kinds of data into beautiful visuals with all sorts of different tools. I find that.

[Drew Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Julia Campbell]

Oh, sorry. What were you going to say?

[Drew Reynolds]

I was going to say Canvas. Such a great tool. One thing I've started having for clients that I work with when I, if I'm creating an annual report or impact report for them that shows kind of their core metrics. Over the course of the year, I've realized that sometimes that document just gets stuck in a drive somewhere and no one ever sees it. So what I started doing is working with our team and we put together on canva, like two minute documents. Videos that summarize the data points with like really fast slides going through and music in the background. And it's well set up for social media that you can put on any, on anything. The one challenge that can come time sometimes come with presenting data is that we think we need to have this really big and impressive report. And most people do not have the time, expertise, or interest to read a large report. What they want is something that they can digest in about a minute or two. So build the report, because you're going to need it. That's your reference document. But then everything else that you create, make it digestible for people to understand.

[Julia Campbell]

I find that the most engaging videos on social media sometimes start with a statistic, so a sort of surprising statistic about a topic that I didn't know. So that's a great way to grab attention to have a hook for your video or your Instagram reel, your TikTok video, and then the put the data, like you just said, maybe in a PowerPoint presentation and recorded. And then you've got a little video and PowerPoint PDF that all works on LinkedIn. So thinking about your channel, thinking about your audience, but looking at the data that you have, how can you, like, repurpose it across channels so it makes the most impact? I think that's, that's fantastic advice. So for the small nonprofits out there. Well, for all the nonprofits, for anyone who wants to sort of take a first step today, like we talked about building authority and thought leadership, we talked about data and storytelling. What do you think is going to be one of the most important things to focus on in the coming year and, or the coming year, this year when this comes out? What is kind of one of the things we should be focusing on? What's the one step we should take as we move into 2025?

[Drew Reynolds]

One thing that I've started to do as both a business owner and also when I consult with nonprofits, is to really emphasize the time, you know, I'll speak for myself here, the time I take to invest in and educate myself. We've, we've all, you know, had opportunities to go to school and learn in some capacity in our lives. But learning is something that is always ongoing and in your field. If you want to be that thought leader, that person, that when you walk into the room, people understand, hey, you're an expert on this topic or this area, then it's important for you to be constantly immersing yourself in the conversation that's happening on that particular area. Now, I was Reading. One of my favorite books recently is a book called Evicted by Matthew Desmond. And it's a wonderful text that just really talks about the interplay between what life is like living in concentrated poverty and how that interplays with health and housing. So that book opened my eyes into what the experience of living on the edge is really like. And when I find, when I'm reading books like that, and then I go speak with a client who does housing and homelessness work, or if I read, you know, a great Vivek Mertes, for example, wrote a book on loneliness, the Surgeon General. And then I read that book and then I go talk to clients who do work in mental health. I find that I have such a closer understanding of the work that they're doing and that I'm then able to. It comes out in the writing, in the speaking that I do. So the more that you can invest in yourself, reading constantly audiobooks, constantly, podcasts like this one, for example, I think constantly are great examples to educate yourself. Going to the sector or into the next year, then it's to figure out, okay, how then do I as a nonprofit leader, situate my organization and the work that we do and our mission in conversation with some of those national dialogues? And so you are speaking on panels, you are going to conferences, you're going out and getting yourself out there in ways, maybe you're calling up a reporter if you're afraid to do so, and putting together together or maybe working on an op ed for your local paper. Like, these are ways that once you've done that reading and education work and feeding your mind on your subject area, that then allows you to then have the background information that you need to then put it in conversation with your own work. And then you go out and say, okay, this is how my nonprofit XYZ is able to be in dialogue and in conversation with this area and how we as an organization might be able to be part of the solution.

[Julia Campbell]

I love that. So beautifully put. Thank you. Drew. How can people get in touch with you, work with you, and learn more about the fantastic work that you do?

[Drew Reynolds]

So to find out more, check out our website at www.common good data.com. you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm there pretty regularly, so you can direct message me there that way if you want to get in touch as well. So, yeah, those are the two best places to find me.

[Julia Campbell]

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was really informative, insightful. I don't talk a lot about data so it's very interesting interest topic that I think my audience is going to get a lot from. So really appreciate you being on here, sharing your expertise.

[Drew Reynolds]

Absolutely. Julia, thanks so much for having me on.

[Julia Campbell]

Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on instagram at. Julia Campbell 77 Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unicorn.