Like podcasts? Find our full archive here or anywhere you listen to podcasts: search Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Pandora, and more. Or ask your smart speaker.
Director of Data and Systems at the Greater Washington Community Foundation in Washington DC, Jenn Walen, discusses her role in managing data policies and training and supporting nonprofit staff in keeping data clean and organized.
Jenn stresses that you need a single source of truth, standards for data entry, and policies. Spending the time to decrease the time spent pulling reports and seeing the whole picture is extremely valuable in this moment. Jenn shares advice and experiences in getting your nonprofit’s data where you want it to be.
Everybody wants to look good. Good data helps everyone at your organization look good – to your board, your executives, your donors, your constituents. And good data saves everyone time.
Additionally, nonprofits looking for one thing they can do to protect themselves in this political environment should look to their data governance and standards. This project doesn’t have to involve highly paid consultants or new expensive tools. It just takes prioritization, time, and good change management.
Data governance is hard. It isn’t something that AI can do for you. Data governance sounds boring. But it is the number one thing your nonprofit can do to protect yourself, your mission, and your staff.
Often, staff and executives are feeling burned and burned out by unreliable data, and that leads to creating workarounds, which compounds the problem of unreliable data.
Set the standard that there is one source of truth for your organization’s data, and that everyone has access to all the data. Standards should follow the data from entry/first touch to final outputs. Build them into the business process so that standards are part of every staff member’s day to day workflow.
When the data is more complete and reliable, interactions with donors and grantees go better. That leads to better outcomes for your organization, and better support for your mission. The opposite is also true – unreliable and unsecured data jeopardizes your mission and can endanger your people and constituents.
Data Management is a valuable job that someone needs to “own” at your organization. Depending on the size of your database and the state of your data it may be a full time job! Don’t expect everyone to pitch in part time. For consistency, you need one manager, with the support of leadership backing them up.
The data manager needs to be accessible and available, constantly helping make the data better for everyone. Showing the results of the cleaning and organizing is important to building a data protection community at your organization. Encouraging sharing between colleagues is a part of the role. At the Community Foundation all staff receive an email update weekly about changes made to data.
Opportunities to talk to our colleagues about the data helps build confidence in the data and creates opportunities to collaborate and have stronger results in whatever our jobs are with the organization. Trustworthy data saves everyone time.
Cybersecurity is non-negotiable. Both for the safety of your staff and organization, and for the protection of the data you have been entrusted with. Protecting your data protects the reputation of your organization. Confidential information has to stay confidential, which requires organization-wide policies and training.
Governance sounds boring! Data that works well, that you know is secure, and that provides new opportunities through the “one source of truth” is exciting!
Little pockets of data are harder to protect, especially if staff are keeping important data in excel or Google files. All the bad guys are getting more creative and more aggressive, so don’t rely on protection only at the staff level; cybersecurity has to be integrated all the way from staff training to standard processes to institution-wide cybersecurity protections.
Beautiful things happen when data is governed. You can empower staff to generate their own accurate mailing lists and reports. You can save staff time on routine tasks by cutting out the onerous workarounds. It gives your organization insights into trends and patterns. It gives staff confidence. They feel good about doing their job with trustworthy data.
Untrustworthy data creates an enormous amount of tension and frustration – when you remove those fears and make their jobs easier, you will see an enormous change in staff mood.
Be consistent. Create standards and uphold them. No exceptions.
If you need data governance documentation, templates and assistance are available online. You don’t have to start from scratch, ask your colleagues.
Kindness along the way is important. This is not easy. Data clean up is a pain. Everyone lending a hand can help create solidarity and a culture of accuracy. Support your colleagues!
People learn in multiple ways and with multiple styles. Provide training and support to meet them where they are.
Get support from leadership to emphasize data clean up priorities.
It is so satisfying when the data is in good shape. The rewards for doing the hard work are great.
AI tools are helpful. Start with education and training on the tools you plan to use. The tools you can use will depend on your database. Get the training from your vendor on the AI that is being incorporated into your tool. Work with a data consultant to understand implementing AI to understand the implications, the security, and matching the tool to your needs and use policies.
Every output from AI needs to have a human review. Don’t expect to give AI your data and have it sort and clean it for you with minimum input from humans. YOU still need to do the work.
Be careful. Respect confidentiality and follow your organization’s data governance policies. Think about how you would want an organization to handle your own data.
Jenn Walen joined The Community Foundation in March 2020. As the Director, Data and Systems, Jenn leads current efforts to benchmark current information management practices and evolve The Community Foundation’s information systems and processes to higher levels of efficiency and sophistication.
Jenn has over 15 years of experience in development and operations at other community foundations in Baltimore and Nashville and most recently managed foundation relations for a human services organization in Baltimore. She received a BA in Religion from Boston University, Phi Beta Kappa, and did graduate work at Vanderbilt University. Jenn was happy to talk about data governance, unprotected data, and unprotected mission with Carolyn.
Carolyn Woodard is currently head of Marketing and Outreach at Community IT Innovators. She has served many roles at Community IT, from client to project manager to marketing. With over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit world, including as a nonprofit technology project manager and Director of IT at both large and small organizations, Carolyn knows the frustrations and delights of working with technology professionals, accidental techies, executives, and staff to deliver your organization’s mission and keep your IT infrastructure operating. She has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Williams College.
She was happy to have this podcast conversation with Jenn Walen about data governance questions and the beautiful things that can happen with trustworthy data, and hopes learning about unprotected data, unprotected mission is helpful to our nonprofit audience.
Community IT has been serving nonprofits exclusively for twenty years. We offer Managed IT support services for nonprofits that want to outsource all or part of their IT support and hosted services. For a fixed monthly fee, we provide unlimited remote and on-site help desk support, proactive network management, and ongoing IT planning from a dedicated team of experts in nonprofit-focused IT. And our clients benefit from our IT Business Managers team who will work with you to plan your IT investments and technology roadmap if you don’t have an in-house IT Director.
Being 100% employee-owned is important to us and our clients. It is an important aspect of our culture as a business serving nonprofits exclusively for almost 25 years. We constantly research and evaluate new technology to ensure that you get cutting-edge solutions that are tailored to your organization, using standard industry tech tools that don’t lock you into a single vendor or consultant. And we don’t treat any aspect of nonprofit IT as if it is too complicated for you to understand.
We think your IT vendor should be able to explain everything without jargon or lingo. If you can’t understand your IT management strategy to your own satisfaction, keep asking your questions until you find an outsourced IT provider who will partner with you for well-managed IT. You should never have unprotected data or an unprotected mission.
More on our Managed Services here. More resources on Cybersecurity here.
If you’re ready to gain peace of mind about your IT support, let’s talk.
Photo by Tijana Drndarski on Unsplash
Wednesday January 21st, 2026, at 3pm Eastern join our experts to explore trends in AI, cybersecurity, and essential IT for nonprofits.
Fill out the form below to request a quote. We’ll be in touch shortly to discuss your needs and take the first step toward better nonprofit IT.