The Research Practices and Needs of Non-Profit Organizations in an Urban Center

How do nonprofit organizations use data and research? What challenges do they face in conducting research and managing data? In spring of 2004, 80 nonprofit organizations in Toledo, Ohio returned a survey on their research and data needs and practices. The survey found that nonprofits collect data on a wide variety of topics, but do not use much of the data that they collect, and do not collect much data that could be useful for other groups, particularly neighborhood organizations. The average nonprofit in the survey has five employees and four volunteers who, together, spend 56 hours per week collecting, managing, and reporting on data. Nearly half of the organizations have no staff or volunteers with formal research training. The others have only one or two people with formal research training. More than half indicated a need for training on how to conduct evaluations, how to use data management software, how to conduct research, and how to find funding. Keywords: nonprofits, research methods, data management Introduction Of all the capacity issues facing nonprofit organizations in the United States, perhaps none has been so neglected as their research data needs. There are numerous training and technical assistance resources for various programming areas, organizational development, and information technology. But, outside of evaluation research, the crucial area of collecting, managing, analyzing and using research data is neglected by the trainers and the researchers working with nonprofits. And that is a serious neglect. Grant proposals, evaluations, fiscal monitoring, resource allocation, and overall project planning are all dependent on tight research and solid information. The types of research data needed for those activities can range from census data to client case data to all varieties of specialty data for different nonprofits, making research data practice a highly complex and time-consuming part of nonprofit work. What do I mean by "research data practice"? Basically, I am concerned with the systematic collection of information to inform nonprofit program development and evaluation. This includes typically-recognized research practices such as surveys. It also includes systematic collection of client or membership data that could be, though it is often not, analyzed for patterns or categories. Research data practice does not have to be informed by a theoretical or disciplinary-based question and, instead, may be informed by a practical need such as "what are the best practices in the area of youth programming" (Stoecker, 2005). This research focuses on what research data nonprofit organizations collect, how they use that data, and what challenges they face in collecting and using research data. It is important to understand that the concept of research data includes most of the information that nonprofits collect, including client-level data that may not be viewed as research data by the organization. Such information, however, can often be very informative in helping nonprofits understand trends in who they are serving and in supplying the sampling frame from which they can conduct evaluation research. That such data is often not seen as research data is part of the problem. The lack of focus on nonprofits' research data practice needs has real consequences. This research project began as an outgrowth of my experience conducting participatory evaluation research with a local neighborhood organization. As we attempted to collect outcome data for the organization, we realized how little data there was, and how difficult it was to fill the data gaps. Consequently, a group of us concerned about this issue set out to determine the state of the art of nonprofit information management. The Lack of Data on Nonprofit Research Needs and Practices We know little about the research data needs, practices, and capacities of small and medium size nonprofit organizations. …