How do I bring DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) in my data related works?

2020 looks like a year that demands us to own our faults so far. No longer can we de-prioritize or continue pushing our casual ignorance, be it about taking our relationships seriously or examining the importance of equity, or thinking about “self-care”. As we unpack these emotions and our actions of the past and future, I am consciously focusing my effort today at a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility inspired question – how do I bring DEIA into my work? That’s right – not workplace but work. I am an analytics consultant whose day to day includes having a complicated relationship with data, processes, and tools. Whether its finding capacity for major gift donors, analyzing survey for the planned giving program or case message testing, assessing alumni engagement, or building an annual giving dashboard - no matter what the question is, my day starts and ends with data. So, the million-dollar question is – are there things we could do, from a data and processes standpoint that makes this work more inclusive and accessible?

Here is a list of things we can do to answer this question. If not most easily implementable, at least they would raise the right questions and initiate the thought process to bring the necessary change. This list is divided by the usual data-centric works from our Nonprofit industry. Remember, this is always a work-in-progress list, so if there are additions relevant to your organization or team, don’t hesitate to incorporate them.

Donor Capacity Analysis: This is one of the analysis that is perhaps most desirable traditionally in our industry. Many approaches and methodologies have developed behind it, yet, the outcome, I bet, does not look too different. Well, that, of course, for organizations of the same sizes and sectors. Not trying to compare apples to oranges. The end outcome is a prospect list – which has a similar profile of top donors. Our personal biases then confirm the usual profiles, and thus a dangerous pattern is established forever and ever. No more! So, what can we do differently?

• Check your prospect definition. Go beyond just Top Prospects and Prospects!
• Check the dollar thresholds for someone to be called a top prospect
• When it comes to Major Gift programs, take a holistic look at your database and see whether you can create a Middle Donor program that celebrates more people from humble backgrounds with affinity for your organization. Or, re-evaluate changing the threshold of a major gift to encourage a more diverse pool of top prospects. Of course, this step requires the involvement of the broader advancement team and the Board.
• Create thoughtful, inclusive segments that go beyond dollar amounts. Engage these segments differently to develop an affinity with them.

Database analysis: This is the entry point of data in your organization. Your database has both a major advantage and a disadvantage for becoming more DEIA compliant. The advantage is that you can establish clear, inclusive rules of data collection that ultimately lead to better data for other projects (surveys, capacity analysis, etc.). However, the disadvantage is – your database tool is not in your or your organization’s hands. These databases are 3rd party software that is coming with already established terminologies and processes. So, what could you do here?

• Create an inclusive database onboarding document for your entire team, that helps the team acquire consistent knowledge.
• Conduct database training at regular intervals for your team to ensure their comfort in using your database efficiently and collecting the right data.
• Setup right and legally allowed structures to collect information about staff and donor social identifiers. Because this is sensitive data, don’t forget to place appropriate security constraints.
• Setup queries that run a report on the demography of your staff and donors at regular intervals.
• Try to combine the donor capacity analysis results with your database records, so your analysis in the future can be cohesive and inclusive.
• Intermittently evaluate how your database is being used and not used by your staff. Especially with COVID-19, your staff needs must be heard, including the ones that quickly get deprioritized.
• Review the day-to-day language and color choice around status checks to ensure no silent biases are solidifying without knowledge.

Donor & Staff Surveys: Surveys are the most common research instruments. But, often it is the most common things that lack the most obvious considerations. So where to begin?

• Ensure the design of your survey (in terms of UI) questionnaire is inclusive for its participants, e.g., if colors are essential for your survey, then keeping the tones recommended for color-blind participants or keeping the general fonts and button sizes on universally accepted values.
• Ensure your questionnaire uses an inclusive language for all participants.
• Ensure that your survey is available in several formats – email, website, social media, and SMS to encourage participation from all spheres.
• Analyze your survey in combination with data from your database to create richer segmented insights.
• If your survey is for a particular group, ensure that you follow all protocols in the question and response texts and distribution language of the survey.
• Always ensure to include the option of anonymity in the surveys. Not all participants are comfortable in sharing their identifying info along with responses.
• Ensure all your answer texts are inclusive of all types of responses in general. For example, include “Others (comments)” or “None of these” to provide all possible options to the participants.
• If you are collecting demographic data, ensure that its legally allowed as per GDPR rules of the location of data collection and that all questions include the most recent suggested possible answer choices, to be inclusive.

Prospect Identification: This is perhaps the bread of data related works in the Nonprofit industry. This area of work needs, undoubtedly, a more observant approach.

• First things first – check the criteria for your prospects. Broaden it to make them more inclusive.
• Broaden your research methodologies and the data sources you usually use.
• Continuously build a network of diverse prospect researchers who can help in increasing knowledge of more data sources.
• Host occasionally “let’s revisit our research methods and outcomes” in your organization, to enable your Board and leadership to think beyond the usual ways of new prospects.
• Look for impact metrics that go beyond dollar amounts. Whether you are looking for prospects or working on an analysis to share your fundraising progress to your Board, look beyond dollars. The broader you make the definition of impact, the more are the chances of slowly unlearning the traditional approach of looking at “success”.

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This list is only the beginning. It needs revision iteratively again and again. Let the work begin!