Data Sharing Systems - So, What Do Nonprofits Really Want? | Part 6 of 7

All of this discussion about data sharing systems eventually leads to a more fundamental question: what do nonprofits actually need and want? Running a foundation, and running a grant management system provider, means we have spoken with hundreds of nonprofits over several decades. They have shared their frustrations openly, and the things they were saying 20 years ago, they are still saying today.

What we have consistently heard is that nonprofits want:

• Shorter, simpler, and more rational application and report forms. Every hour spent on paperwork is an hour not spent raising money, delivering programs, or serving their communities. The burden of grant applications is real, and it falls most heavily on small organizations with limited staff.
• Greater transparency into the grantmaker's review and decision-making process. Grantmakers are, for the most part, a black box. An application is a nonprofit's entry point into that process, but once it's submitted, the nonprofit has almost no visibility into how the information is used, what criteria matter most, or why decisions go the way they do. Greater transparency would allow nonprofits to develop a clearer sense of whether they're actually a fit for a given grantmaker - and to build and maintain a more genuine relationship with the ones they are.
• Fewer restrictions on how grant funds can be used. Unrestricted funding is gold to nonprofits. Restricted grants often place constraints that don't align well with organizational reality. This is probably a third rail for many grantmakers, but it's consistently one of the most significant sources of frustration for nonprofits.
• Timely and responsive support when something goes wrong. Access to a real person who can answer questions quickly and accurately saves everyone time and stress. A recurring issue here is confusion over who's responsible for what - is a problem with the software, or with the grantmaker's process? As a GMS provider that is also a grantmaker, we have a clear sense of where that line is. For nonprofits, it's often much murkier.

Notice what isn't on this list: data sharing. Nonprofits are focused on the grant process itself on transparency, flexibility, and simplicity. Data sharing is a technology feature that could, in theory, save a few minutes on an application. But since it isn't widely available across grantmakers, it doesn't register as a meaningful time-saver. And even where it does exist, the time saved by pre-populating a field is usually small compared to the time spent collecting, drafting, and editing the substantive answers that make an application competitive.

This is not to say that data sharing has no value. It's to say that the sector may have been pointing the technology at the wrong problem.