Data Sharing Systems - What is Data Sharing? | Part 2 of 7

Data sharing as a concept can take several different forms. The three most common are:

• Self-curated information. Platforms where nonprofits provide information about their organization, programs, and focus areas - sometimes supplemented by third-party data such as IRS Business Master Files. The nonprofit manages and maintains this information. The obvious limitation is that this information is only as current as the last time someone updated it, and many nonprofits don't keep it up to date. It can be useful for background research by grantmakers, but it often doesn't contain everything needed for a full application or evaluation.
• Reusable application information. Information from a previously submitted application is retained by the grant management system - or shared with an external platform - and can be referenced or pre-populated into future applications to the same or different grantmakers. In theory, this saves nonprofits time. In practice, we've observed a downside: pre-populated fields tend to get skipped. Nonprofits are busy, and even when their answers have changed, they often don't catch it. The result is that grantmakers end up reviewing stale, inaccurate data. This is why some of our grantmaker customers prefer to require applicants to complete a fresh application every time - it's not inefficiency, it's a deliberate quality control decision. There's also a data consistency challenge: if multiple grantmakers are feeding information back to a shared external platform, conflicts can arise about which version of the data is current.
• Combined self-curated and reusable application information. A blend of the two approaches above, with information flowing in from the nonprofit, from third parties, and from submitted applications - all potentially used for different purposes. This model carries some of the benefits of both approaches, but the additional complexities. Curating, managing, and sharing information from so many different sources is a significant challenge.

A truly successful data sharing system would save time and effort for nonprofits, potentially save time for grantmakers, and consolidate information into an authoritative source that everyone can trust.

It also requires substantial scale to deliver real value. A data sharing system used by only a handful of grantmakers helps almost no one. Widespread adoption requires genuine demand from nonprofits and genuine buy-in from grantmakers. Without both, any data sharing effort risks becoming the classic solution in search of a problem.